Jefferson District in 1900 from the Virginia Title Company’s Map of Alexandria County.
Originally published in the August 2024 edition of Greet Del Ray.
In 1847, the portion of the District of Columbia on the west side of the Potomac River retroceded to Virginia creating Alexandria County (subsequently renamed Arlington County in 1920). The new Virginia constitution of 1870 divided counties into three “townships” which later became magisterial districts. Alexandria County was divided into Washington District in the north, Arlington District in the center and Jefferson District in the south. The same constitutional change made Alexandria City, which only extended up to First Street, separate from the County.
The northern border of Jefferson District ran from approximately the northeast corner of Arlington Cemetery to the intersection of Quaker Lane and King Street. At the time of its creation, Jefferson District was very rural, consisting of large farms, plantations and estates (see the August 2023 and December 2023 issues of Greet Del Ray). However, in the 1890s with the growth of transportation (see the June 2024 issue), small suburbs began to crop up between Alexandria and Washington. These included Braddock Heights (see the October 2023 issue), Addison Heights, Del Ray & St. Elmo (see the February 2023 issue). Similar growth occurred in the other districts with the villages of Rosslyn, Clarendon, Ballston, Bon Air, Glencarlyn, etc.
By the late 1920s, Alexandria sought to further expand its territories. On the premise of providing better services to its suburbs, like the Town of Potomac, Alexandria sought to annex the southern half of Jefferson District. In a contentious court case, Alexandria succeeded and the annexation took effect on 1 January 1930. The northern border of the city moved from First Street all the way up to Four Mile Run, almost doubling the size of the City. In response to this loss, the County passed several new ordinances preventing further annexations and reorganized into a County Manager form of government in 1932, which abolished the magisterial districts. Subsequently, Arlington County was treated as a consolidated entity more like a city than a county, and Alexandria looked west into Fairfax County for its next annexation in 1952.