(Part One of an article in the June 2001 issue of the Lorton Valley Star)
Reconstructing Vintage Lorton
The Lorton of days past is captured in your photos and being reconstructed.
It's not a rebuilding as with Colonial Williamsburg but as an online Museum.
The web gallery of vintage Lorton photos is available for the world to see.
It is being assembled from old photos provided by individuals who share their
personal snapshots of old landmarks, homes, stores and people.
The man behind the project is a resident of this past time in Lorton. He has
fond memories of days growing up here in rural Lorton in touch with nature.
We want to give you his story and share some of the popular views from this
site. We hope to also have a local show of some of the treasures of the
collection. Here is the self bio:
"My family lived in Lorton towards the end of Wildwood Street from about 1964
to 1970 - essentially my Elementary School years. We had lived briefly in
Mansassas and Fairfax before that.
I think that as you get older your memories of the place where you spent
your formative years becomes more and more precious. My fondest memory of
growing up in Lorton was the access to nature. We were surrounded by woods
and creeks and within a short driving distance of parks, lakes, mountains,
and the ocean.
I also believe that Baby Boomers are more nostalgic than any other
generation in the history of recorded time. Never has a single generation
had so many unique icons - Color TV; Situation Comedies; Cartoons;
Commercials; Movies; Drive-In Movies; Movie and TV Stars; Toys and Toy
Advertising; Action Figures; Battery Operated Toys; Plastic; Rock Music;
The Beatles; Disco; Sports; the Super Bowl; the '50s; the '60s; the '70s;
The Bomb; Cancer; McDonalds; Convenience Stores; Self-Serve; Diets;
Microwaves; Pet Rocks; VCRs; 8-Track Tapes; Double-Albums; and on and on.
eBay owes it's stunning growth to Baby Boomer's obsession with reclaiming
lost accessories from their youth. Some of their largest categories are GI
Joes; Hotwheels; Pez; and Barbies. I've noticed that once people get over
accumulating Army Men and Chatty Cathy dolls, they start getting interested
in their roots and where they grew up. That's why Genealogy has been all
the rage the last 5 years. It's also why the LortonVA.net page gets so many
looks. People are looking for information on the cities they grew up in.
They are also interested in places like the Dixie Pig, Story Book Land, the
Super 29 Drive-In, Virginia City, and the Topps Drive-In. These are the
words that are searched for the most often in our search engine.
My interest in Lorton and Northern Virginia was the same as anyone who grew
up there and then moved away. As I began to communicate with people that I
hadn't talked to in 30 years, I became alarmed as I learned several of the
buildings that I remembered had been torn down and that the wooded areas
were shrinking. That's when I decided to try to document / archive as much
of Northern Virginia from the '50s-'70s as I could. A website is a great
venue for doing that because it makes your archive available to the public
and encourages them to participate.
Were places like the Dixie Pig and Story Book Land as important as Pohick
Church and Gunston Hall? In the grand scheme of things that question is
clearly ridiculous, ludicrous and laughable. Both of those landmarks
represent an important time in our nations history and the fact that they
are still standing is a tribute to some forward-thinking people. But having
said that, the fistful of people who grew up eating cabbage and pork
sandwiches at the Pig and wandering through the magical paths of Story Book
Land while getting peppered with misquito bites always let me know that they
are elated to the point of tears when they first rediscover those and the
other 350 plus images (now nearing 2500) from that period on our website."
