Observer Online | History | Sterling Park Began as Rail Station, Farming Center

Sterling Park Began as Rail Station, Farming Center

by Peggy D. Vetter

Observer Staff Writer

More than 100 years before Sterling Park was a gleam in the eyes of the developers, the Broyhills or United States Steel, Old Sterling had its own railroad station and served as the commercial center for area farmers.

Gertrude Smith Fletcher, who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in what is now known as Old Sterling, remembers it as a close-knit community, with a population hovering around 200.

“When I attended the old two-room schoolhouse on Ruritan Circle, I could stop in any house on the north side of the street and get a sandwich after school,” she said, “because they were all my relatives.”

Education ended for many children from farm families after they graduated from eighth grade in the local schoolhouse, but those who wanted to continue went to high school in Ashburn, the next stop on the railroad line.

Children growing up in those days in a small village addressed many of the adults they came into contact with daily by the honorary title of Aunt or Uncle. But in her case, the families on that side of the street really were related by blood or marriage.

The W&OD Railroad tracks, which bisected the village, were lined on the north side by a line of comfortable homes and businesses and on the south side by the depot, Mr. Chick’s Mill, and a Southern States store, on what was then called Railroad Ave., now Ruritan Rd.

On the south side, accessed by Railroad Ave., was the large Sterling Mercantile store, owned and run by Boss Groome and his wife, Nina Smith Groome. After closing that store in the 1930s, Groome opened a meat market in the building now occupied by a lawn mower repair shop.

Next door to Sterling Mercantile was a two-story residence, built in the early 1850s, that was known throughout the area as the Summer White House. Riding in a “coach and six” President Buchanan brought his family there to escape the heat of Washington in the summers of 1859 and 1860. The Summer White House, which was operated as a hotel for many years, was used as recently as the 1970s as an antique shop and was demolished five years ago.

Several two-story buildings with second-floor porches that functioned as both stores and homes, can still be seen on the north side of the tracks. In the 1870s the Ellmore’s ran a store downstairs and lived above in one building; in another was Dave Beavers’ general merchandise store, and a third was a combination bar and barber shop.

At one point in its history, Sterling had a total of five bars or saloons, Tavenners Wheelwright or blacksmith shop, run by George Ankers; a saddlery; Page’s Grocery; and, in the Harvey Crosen house, a combination shoe store, bar and post office.In later years, Floyd Crosen built a bigger house and store on Church Rd. closer to Route 28. That building was most recently occupied by J&D Electronics.

The street that crossed the railroad tracks, now Ruritan Circle, was anchored at one end by the Guilford Baptist Church, built in 1857, and at the other end by the Methodist Church, dating from 1875.

The village boasted something that few other small communities had, “nice cement sidewalks all over the area, up to the grade school and down to the Mercantile Store,” Mrs. Fletcher said.

Gertrude Fletcher has become the unofficial historian of Sterling, it seems, by virtue of having been related to most of the business people there. Her vast accumulation of ledgers, sales books and records yields such information as the fact that the village has had three names over its history.

It was first called Guilford Station, named by the Alexandria, Loudoun & Hampshire Railroad when the station opened in 1860, and in 1872 was renamed Loudoun, because it was the first stop over the county line. In 1887, when J.P. Morgan bought the line which was eventually to become the Washington & Old Dominion, he gave it the final name, Sterling, supposedly because of his large banking interests.

She has the last salesbook from the mill owned by E.T. Harding recording the final sale on Feb. 7, 1944, the day it closed its doors.

Other records pertain to Sterling’s two old cemeteries, of which Gertrude Fletcher is clerk-agent and her husband, Charles Fletcher, is superintendent.

The historian has the records and ledgers kept by an aunt, Mildred Kidwell Smith, who was postmistress of Sterling for 40 years until 1965 when a modern facility was opened next to the Sterling Park Mall. She operated last out of a small building on Ruritan Rd. that has been well preserved by the owners of Loudoun Furniture, which uses it as an annex.

Mrs. Fletcher has filled album after album with news clippings and photographs related to Sterling or to her extended family. She explains that when she was growing up, most of the farm families in Ashburn, Herndon, Great Falls, Floris and Pleasant Valley, knew each other through school, church and 4-H Club events or because they were related. They regularly visited back and forth and the same names, such as Kidwell, Crosen, Smith and Ellmore are woven through the histories of all those communities.

For example, when the young Gertrude Smith decided the finish high school in Herndon, because Loudoun County did not offer commercial courses, she stayed with an uncle, Wilson McGlincy, and his family. Another uncle, and at one time a mayor of Herndon, as was McGlincy, was the late Calvin Kidwell.

After Gertrude Smith married Charlie Fletcher, whose family owned the Ashburn Mill, they bought a 300 acre farm at Route 7 and Ashburn Rd. and raised their children there, while remaining active in community affairs, such as the Ashburn Volunteer Fire Department.

For 30 years the couple headed a 4-H Club and Mrs. Fletcher proudly displays the boxes and boxes of blue ribbons won at events from coast-to-coast by its young members. For 26 years she served as a substitute teacher in Loudoun County schools.

Both the couple’s children have remained in the area. Son Thomas Fletcher is chief dispatcher and systems manager at the Herndon Police Department and daughter Barbara Fletcher is a guidance counselor at Herndon High School.

As the years passed and the number of farmers began to dwindle, residents began to moved over to The Park and Old Sterling began its downhill slide from thriving commercial center to near ghost town. Several simultaneous blows led to its demise in the early 1960s.

The railroad, which had only continued to operate in order to carry cement for the construction of runways at Dulles Airport, went out of business, and the mall at Sterling Park opened, soon followed by new shopping centers at Route 7 and Dranesville Rd.

The buildings in Old Sterling, some nearly 100 years old, continued to deteriorate and many were soon abandoned or torn down. The old village had little to offer its new neighbors to the east.

When the Fletchers sold the acres they had farmed in Ashburn since 1952, it seems fitting that they moved to a trim split-level house in a well-kept neighborhood in Sterling Park, still among family, such as Aunt Mildred Kidwell Smith, who lives nearby.