It is probably the area’s most unrecognized ecological jewel—the Elklick Woodland Preserve, a 226-acre green space that offers a snapshot of pre-colonial Virginia before European settlers invaded with their horses, crops and other domesticated livestock. 

Shoehorned in far Western Fairfax County, it is the only preserved northern hardpan basic oak-hickory forest in the world. This forest type—characterized by shorter trees and lush grassy fields—occurred only in a few spots in Northern Virginia and Maryland. Most of those have disappeared due to the rapid urban and suburban growth, said Charles Smith, senior natural resource specialist with the county park authority. 

The preserve is not well known, despite its location along Pleasant Valley Road just north of the Virginia Run community. Not that the county wants to keep the preserve a secret. County officials are proud of the fact they were to acquire the property very cheaply before it was gobbled up by housing development. They just haven’t had the money to put up an internal trail system or kiosks to signal the consequence of the preserve, Smith said. It is marked by a single tiny sign along a power line easement off of Pleasant Valley. 

“When you visit, you won’t at first recognize how it’s unique,” Smith said. “But being in a large area, undeveloped, you get a little bit of a big-country feelings. You don’t get hordes of people out there. It’s great.” 

The preserve, better known by its formal name as the Elklick Woodland Natural Area Preserve, is part of a 4,000-acre assemblage of parkland holdings in Western Fairfax, which also includes the Cub Run Stream Valley Park. The county has been putting the parcels together for years in an attempt to safeguard for future generations some of Centreville’s horse-country past. 

In addition to being an environmental reserve, it also gives visitors a window into the past. Because the preserve is located on an outcropping of 200-million-year-old igneous rock, the area was a favorite spot for pre-settlement Indians who were looking for hard stone to quarry for tools, Smith said.   

The Centreville area was occupied by the Tauxenet, also known as the Dogue, Indians in the period immediately proceeding colonization. Captain John Smith visited the main town of the Tauxenet near the mouth of the Occuquan River in 1608, according to local historians. However, visitors today won’t see the same white oak, pignut hickory, white ash and redbud trees that grew for the Tauxenet. 

Those trees are long gone, cut down by the Indians and then by the New World settlers. However, the soil is nutrient poor, which made it a lousy candidate for post-colonial farming. During the more recent suburban building rush, developers couldn’t put houses on the land because it was unsuitable for septic systems. 

“It is really hard to farm,” Smith said. “Once they cut the timber off, they gave up farming after civil war. Modern development wasn’t feasible because there was no sewer. That is the happy accident that resulted in the preservation of the place.”