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CHAPTER 2

Where Have All the Forests Gone?

In the spring of 1970, a national television crew traveled to Fairfax County to record the public’s involvement in a dramatic environmental movement. Just a month earlier, millions of Americans had participated in the first Earth Day, raising awareness and learning about environmental issues locally and globally.¹ Earth Day was a headline event in a banner year for modern envisronmentalism, but so too was the news story the television crew covered.

The event in question was a public hearing on a proposal to preserve a forested landscape along the Potomac from being converted into a luxury housing project. More than two hundred people attended and more than fifty testified, including a number of teenagers.² The highlight of the meeting was a stirring rendition of a folk song written by high school student Susan Daniel. Modeled after Woody Guthrie’s iconic “This Land Is Your Land,” Daniel’s song offered a reflective, youth-centered perspective on the environmental impact of postwar suburbanization as she called for preserving the hills, plans, wildlife, and Potomac waterfront that the Burling tract offered.³

The year 1970 is often remembered for national events like Earth Day and the creation of the EPA. Indeed, the decade more broadly represented a golden era of environmental policy making reinforced by the rise of national environmental organizations as a potent force in American politics. Even as environmental politics was scaling up, the Burling case testified to the enduring importance of grassroots activism. Indeed, local environmentalists in Fairfax defined the contours of “smart growth” two decades before the term came into official use.

After a quarter century of rampant suburbanization, residents, officials, and organized interests in Fairfax spent 1970 debating whether the Burling tract should be developed for upscale housing or protected as a park and nature preserve. A year earlier, a local development firm acquired the 336-acre parcel in the mostly white and affluent community of McLean. The firm proposed unusually significant measures to control runoff into the nearby Potomac associated with developing the site’s steep slopes and to preserve half the land as open space. A small group of nearby homeowners, however, had strong misgivings about the potential loss of one of the few wild, forested landscapes left in the county. As they organized for a battle in their backyard, they were joined by hundreds of high school and college students who wanted a nature preserve in the midst of suburbia. A new generation of local elected officials committed to reining in runaway growth joined an intense community struggle to convince the Burling tract’s developer to preserve the landscape for future generations.

The Burling controversy showed how environmental consciousness among the white middle and upper classes grew as suburbanization intensified. The leisure time that came with the material abundance of postwar America fostered public interest in protecting nearby nature not for its productive capacity, as was the case with traditional conservation, but for its scenic, recreational, and open space amenities.⁴ But suburbanization did not just encroach on open space; it also degraded ecologically sensitive areas such as wetlands and hilly terrain and polluted the water, air, and soil.⁵ As residents in more affluent communities became frustrated with the environmental impact of rapid growth and higher property taxes to support development further out, they embraced land preservation as a way to improve their own quality of life.⁶ The idea that growth could be too expensive—environmentally and financially—was a cornerstone of the smart growth movement in the mid-1990s. This concept was manifest in the Burling case, in which a county that supported rampant postwar suburbanization saw an unprecedented constituency mobilize in favor of environmental protection instead.

While the Burling case represented a certain triumph of an early smart growth movement, it also highlighted the biases among the mostly white, middle-class environmentalists in suburbia. Postwar housing policies and practices had not only created exclusive communities but also differentiated access to opportunities that improved people’s lives, including good schools, public services, well-paying jobs, transportation, and low incidence of crime.⁷ Even as historically marginalized peoples gained political influence during the 1960s, social segregation reinforced the voices of affluent whites over other groups.⁸ At the time of the Burling case, conversations about inclusive housing had shifted from racial discrimination, which had been outlawed with passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, to affordability.⁹ In affluent, white-dominated communities, however, many residents downplayed the need for affordable housing to focus on protecting environmental resources for their own enjoyment, even in cases where land preservation could be expensive.¹⁰ Thus, environmental activists did not challenge the systems underlying community formation, which benefited them, but instead sought to block specific projects that impaired their access to natural amenities.¹¹

Postwar Suburbanization and Open Space

Fairfax County was the epicenter of postwar suburbanization in Greater Washington. The county developed its first zoning code and subdivision regulations in the 1940s, but these proved inadequate to manage the growth ignited by the postwar baby boom and the pent-up demand for housing. By the mid-1950s, its transformation from a quiet rural county to a bustling suburb was well under way.

Late in the decade, officials reduced the density of development in the western two-thirds of the county in order to maintain its rural character. The Virginia Supreme Court, however, rejected the move, concluding in a case brought by a developer that the policy unfairly restricted housing to those who could afford large lots.¹² The court went even further in doubling the allowable density of the area from one house per two acres to one house per acre. The case reflected the unusual control that the state legislature and judiciary exerted over Virginia localities in land use planning, and the tendency of the state to elevate interests in revenue-generating development over local efforts to manage growth.¹³

Residential suburbanization and the decentralization of employment and commerce continued to flood Fairfax with development during the 1960s. By 1970, the county had 455,000 residents, a tenfold increase from 1940. Local elected officials and planners, however, had little interest and fewer tools for managing growth than Maryland counties like Montgomery, which developed its own wedges and corridors plan to promote compact development that was based on the regional plans of the National Capital Planning Commission. Indeed, most residents had little concern about suburbanization except when their communities were threatened with the loss of open space or with high-density development projects.¹⁴

Fairfax made some progress in preserving open space despite conservative political leadership and limited planning tools. In 1950, local officials established a county park authority that administered six regional parks totaling 3,198 acres by 1960. This paled in comparison to the nearly 9,000 acres of parkland in Montgomery, where there was earlier and broader support for pairing open space preservation with compact growth.¹⁵

As suburbanization accelerated, residents and county officials contemplated how to protect the natural amenities that made living in the county appealing.¹⁶ Local planners offered several proposals: reducing the density of development, lowering property taxes on rural land and open space, and increasing public financing for conservation easements or purchasing land outright for parks.¹⁷ But there were numerous barriers at the state level to moving forward with these strategies. Historically, the state courts had narrowly defined how zoning and other tools could be used to regulate private property rights. In addition, the state constitution precluded the use of financial incentives to encourage landowners to preserve land rather than develop it. Although communities in Virginia could use public funds to pay for conservation easements or acquire scenic and historic areas, they had to seek state authorization for each case.¹⁸ In sum, the state constrained localities in their ability to manage growth and preserve rural land.

As suburbia consumed more land, residents and officials in mostly white middle- and upper-class communities stepped up their support of open space preservation. By 1969, parkland in Fairfax expanded to 5,000 acres from 3,200 at the beginning of the decade, although Montgomery’s increased to nearly 15,000 from 9,000.¹⁹ While local officials, as well as regional park authorities, played an important role in parkland acquisition during the 1960s, federal financing through the Land and Water Conservation Fund was crucial to many local projects. Created by Congress in 1965, the fund included a state assistance program that provided matching grants to help states and local communities protect land for parks, recreation, and nature preserves. Among the three large suburban counties in Greater Washington, Fairfax was the biggest beneficiary of the federal program, receiving $2.85 million between 1966 and 1969, while Montgomery received $463,000 and Prince George’s $260,000.²⁰

The motivations behind land preservation in postwar metropolitan America highlighted a shift from the conservation-oriented values of a production-based economy to the environmental and quality-of-life values of a consumer-based economy. Indeed, the commitment to open space preservation that blossomed in the 1960s was made possible by postwar material abundance and the willingness of officials and their constituents, albeit mostly in white middle- and upper-class communities, to invest in land preservation. The protection of specific sites from suburbanization had deep roots in a search for health and well-being that defined the suburbs as better off than central cities. As suburbanization consumed ecologically sensitive resources like hillsides and wetlands, concerns about pollution and the loss of wildlife grew. With the Burling tract, the stage was set for a dramatic grassroots campaign that argued that certain places were too ecologically sensitive, too rich in natural splendor, and too special to develop.²¹

A Controversy Forms

The Burling tract was one of the few properties in Greater Washington adjacent to the Potomac River that had not been significantly developed or permanently preserved by 1970. It was named for Edward J. Burling Sr., a midwesterner who moved to Washington, D.C., during World War I and bought 336 acres of hilly and mostly forested land in McLean in the early 1920s. The property, located twelve miles from the White House, was positioned atop 150-foot cliffs looking down on the Potomac rapids to the north and the waterfall of Scott’s Run to the west. It was situated at the northernmost portion of the Scott’s Run watershed, which drains directly into the Potomac, and offered scenic water views, a remarkable collection of wildflowers, forests of ancient hemlocks, and abundant wildlife.²² Burling, who became a prominent Washington lawyer, had a log cabin built overlooking the rapids. But he refused to have electricity installed, preferring to use kerosene lamps and a wood stove rather than allow a utility company to run wiring underground. Despite not having modern utilities, the estate became a gathering spot for political and social elites, artists, and intellectuals.²³

In 1967, Burling died, leaving his waterfront property in trust to his family. Shortly thereafter, a fire destroyed the house, leaving only a flagpole, swimming pool, and a fireplace on the site. Less than two years later, his heirs sought to sell the estate because they could not afford the taxes, which amounted to over $30,000. Burling’s son went to Stewart Udall to see if the Department of the Interior would purchase the land and turn it into a park or wildlife preserve. Although Udall was interested and had intervened a few years earlier in the Merrywood case, five miles away, the agency did not have the necessary funds. With the existing tax burden and no offers forthcoming to acquire and preserve the property, the Burling family contracted to sell the property to a local development firm in mid-1969.²⁴

Figure 6. Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, formerly the Burling Tract. Source: Fairfax County Park Authority.

The firm of Miller & Smith proposed building a luxury residential community on the Burling estate, whose southeast corner was conveniently situated at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, the Capital Beltway and Georgetown Pike. The plans included three hundred homes clustered on half-acre lots rather than distributed across the entire tract as was common in many suburbs at the time. This left half of the land undeveloped, including strips along the Potomac waterfront to the north and Scott’s Run to the west. In July 1969, officials in the county land development office offered the first approval for preliminary site plans without a public hearing, which was possible because the plans did not conflict with existing single-family zoning. Nearby residents, however, soon became aware of the developer’s plans.²⁵

In the fall of 1969, Betty Cooke, a local artist who lived across from the Burling tract in a 150-year-old pink house, noticed a small green sign on the property announcing a hearing on the development plan before the county planning commission. On September 18, twenty of her friends and neighbors met at the home of Graydon Upton to review the plans and organize a “citizens committee” to advocate for reducing the proposed density and thereby the impact of the project. The membership drew from that of the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association and included Sharon Francis, a former aide to beautification advocate Lady Bird Johnson; David Dominick, head of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration; John Adams, a Washington lawyer for a Richmond firm who was a conservationist and admirer of the Burling tract; and Townsend Hoopes, a former official with the Air Force.²⁶

As middle- and upper-middle-class homeowners living in an affluent community experiencing rampant development, the members of the citizens committee sought to buffer themselves from sprawl while preserving access to the natural amenities that made their communities desirable. Many also had conservation or environmental interests that were piqued by the ecological sensitivity and natural amenities of the Burling tract. Finally, they could draw on their professional knowledge and connections to the community and government to adeptly navigate the political decision-making process that would shape the site’s destiny. Thus this group of citizens was well positioned to influence decision making in the Burling case.²⁷

The citizens’ committee from the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association moved quickly to raise objections to the environmental impact of Miller & Smith’s development proposal. First it commissioned a siltation and erosion study, which discussed how a large-scale project would degrade the site’s slopes and pollute the Potomac. The county government was attuned to these concerns and had instituted a policy requiring developers to control erosion and sedimentation during the land preparation and construction phases of projects. At the first public hearing for the Burling tract project in late October 1969, members of the citizens committee used their study to criticize the developer’s inadequate conservation safeguards and the lack of much usable parkland. They recommended reducing the number of homes to be built on the site from 309 to 100 to lessen the project’s impact, but also asked for another hearing to give them time to possibly secure funding to buy the property for use as a public park.²⁸

By the next public meeting on December 15, the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association was in talks with Walter J. Hickel, Udall’s newly appointed successor at the Interior Department, to seek funds through the Land and Water Conservation Fund to preserve the Burling tract for the public. Hickel, continuing a long tradition of federal officials commenting on development matters in Greater Washington, urged county leaders to reject Miller & Smith’s proposal. In his words, a large-scale residential development near the Potomac “‘would entail destruction of the natural area and, by eroding the steep slopes, add dramatically to the pollution of our national river.’” Hickel recommended preserving the site for the community and hinted that his agency might help buy the property.²⁹ The interests of the citizens committee and Hickel at this point were strongly influenced by the recent national attention to ecological concerns such as erosion and pollution. Over time, however, their discourse shifted to highlight the Burling tract as a landscape whose wilderness and open space amenities should be preserved to counterbalance the loss of nature to suburbanization.

Before moving forward with its plans, Miller & Smith was required as a condition of Burling’s will to consent to a conservation agreement with the property’s heirs. In January 1970, the developer submitted a proposal to the Fairfax and Northern Virginia park authorities for preserving several dozen acres of land. The local park authority declined to sign on, presumably because it could not afford the maintenance costs given its shoestring budget. The regional park authority, however, approved the conservation agreement in late February. It stipulated that twenty-five acres would be reserved for the westward extension of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which was intended to preserve a low profile landscape along the shoreline. In addition, it transferred to the park authority a twenty-six-acre strip of land along Scott’s Run and the Potomac for a park. Last, it placed permanent conservation easements on the entire tract including limiting it to single-family housing, restricting development of the crests of the slopes, and preserving most of the land ceded to the park authority as open space. In exchange, the park authority agreed not to take or support the taking of the property by any government agency through eminent domain.³⁰

The regional park authority accepted the conservation agreement for several reasons. It wanted the land to be preserved and had taken the lead over the past few years to create larger parks throughout Northern Virginia and in Fairfax in particular, using matching funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire land in a county where development pressures inflated its value.³¹ The agency’s five-year capital improvement program also did not include enough money to buy a significant part of the tract outright. In addition, the agency felt that the agreement was the best deal it could get without going into condemnation proceedings to take the property through eminent domain, which would be quite expensive.³² Once the park authority accepted the agreement, the developer had to submit it, along with its plans for the entire Burling tract, to the county planning commission and the board of supervisors, the county’s top elected leadership. This subjected the plans to multiple stages of public review, giving residents the opportunity to influence the decision-making process.

The Burling case generated considerable attention in Fairfax and Greater Washington as an opportunity to redress the environmental impact of suburbanization. A writer for the Washington Post captured the heady mix of environmental concerns and political interests in a February 1970 article. “There are questions of siltation and erosion of land, removal of fully-grown trees to make way for new homes, placement of homes on steep slopes, establishment of parks in a burgeoning metropolitan area and the Federal government’s role in preserving what remains of undeveloped America.”³³

Right before the planning commission met to consider the developer’s site plans and the conservation agreement, Interior Secretary Hickel offered to contribute up to 50 percent of the costs for purchasing the Burling tract and conserving it as a park. His offer, valued at up to $1.2 million, was nearly 40 percent of the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s contingency reserves.³⁴ While the ecological impact of development had previously motivated Hickel, his interests now were more rooted in open space preservation. A spokesman later noted: “The Burling tract is not just a piece of land; it is also an opportunity. It’s so close to a dense population area that in future years—even now—we’ll want open space.”³⁵ Hickel’s deepening interest in the case was a major federal commitment to land conservation at a time of rising environmental consciousness that blended environmental objectives.³⁶ Also, the fact that the property was nearby made it easier for him to be involved and to potentially use the Burling case as a primer for publicizing the value of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

On February 9, the county planning commission approved the conservation agreement and development proposal, which sent the project to the board of supervisors for final approval. However, the commission urged concerned parties to continue seeking funding to buy the property for use as a park.³⁷ By the time the supervisors held their first public hearing in mid-March, civic concern about the Burling tract had expanded beyond the neighborhood level.

Marian Agnew, who became one of the most prominent “sewer ladies” working to clean up the Potomac during the 1970s, got her start in environmental activism with the Burling case. Agnew, the wife of an air force pilot, was looking for a place to walk her two dogs one day when she realized how little park space, not to mention wooded areas, was left in Fairfax. While working as a substitute teacher at Langley High School, she advised a group of students, including her son, on a school project to plan a system of bike trails for McLean. Agnew and the students soon learned about the Burling case and decided to get involved based on their interests in outdoor recreation. Over the next several months, she and the students were at the center of a grassroots movement that called not simply for reducing the density of development at the Burling tract but for protecting the entire site as a park and nature preserve. In an interview after the case was over, Agnew explained the approach she came to adopt in her environmental activism: “I realized that confrontation is often the only way to get action.”³⁸

The board of supervisors hearing on March 11 was the first of several high-profile events in a burgeoning campaign to protect the Burling tract from suburban development. The hearing began with testimony from Miller & Smith representative John “Til” Hazel, a staunch growth advocate who was fast becoming the most prominent land use and zoning lawyer for developers in Northern Virginia. Hazel acknowledged civic interest in mitigating the impact of building on the hilly terrain and harming its flora and fauna. To that end he stressed the developer’s unusually robust conservation measures: clustering housing to keep half the land as open space; creating a hiking trail; building ponds to collect soil runoff during construction; and grading small sections of land at a time to control erosion.³⁹

Nearly everyone else at the hearing had strong reservations about the project. A representative from the Interior Department reiterated its commitment to help buy the Burling tract for conversion into a park.⁴⁰ Of the two-dozen residents in attendance, only three supported the developer’s proposal. The rest, which included several high school students associated with Agnew, argued that developing the site would erode its steep slopes and asked the board of supervisors to find a way to preserve the property.⁴¹ The appearance of the students marked the beginning of the sustained involvement of young people in debates about the Burling tract. Their concern came from the loss of recreational open space associated with suburbanization and was enhanced by the rise of environmental education in the United States.⁴²

Despite growing civic opposition, the board of supervisors unanimously accepted the developer’s plans. Harriet S. Bradley, who represented the district where the Burling tract was located, believed that the project aligned with long-term plans for single-family housing in the area. While having a reputation for being critical of developers, she suggested that in this case, local officials had “‘a unique opportunity to work with a developer who is sufficiently concerned with the [environmental] problems of development.’” Finally, she noted that McLean already had a large park—the Turkey Run Recreational Area—that was adjacent to the Potomac.⁴³

An equally important rationale was the high cost of buying the property from Miller & Smith. While the Department of the Interior had offered up to $1.2 million, that money was contingent on the county and the state matching the offer. Fairfax’s share was 20 percent, which translated to nearly half a million dollars, while the state would have to contribute over $700,000. Although Fairfax was a rather wealthy county, it was struggling to pay the bills for an ever-widening array of services as residents settled farther out and sought to lower their tax rates. Dedicating such a considerable amount of money to preserve land that would not generate tax revenue seemed a losing proposition, even though the prospective development of the Burling tract threatened the amenities that many residents saw as contributing to a high quality of life.⁴⁴

The differing viewpoints of public officials and environmentalists highlighted the challenges of translating the value of the environmental goods and services that land offered into the economic calculus of the real estate market. Public officials continually searched for revenue-generating development to pay for public services.⁴⁵ In doing so, they were disinclined to support robust environmental policies that might ward off developers because of their costs for compliance and because of the high costs of paying for land preservation in “hot” real estate markets.⁴⁶ Given that the developer was looking to align its project with the single-family residential character of the community and was willing to offer relatively strong environmental safeguards, it made sense that local officials were open to the site’s development.

In contrast, members of the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association were critical of the decision for setting a bad precedent. As group member John Adams asked, “If you develop this piece of land now, what is to keep other pieces from being developed later?”⁴⁷ Adams’ question echoed of “the tragedy of the commons,” a phrase popularized by Garrett Hardin in a 1968 article about global population pressures that also spoke to the issues surrounding growth and environmental protection in modern America.⁴⁸ It questioned how the law and the mechanisms of the market privileged individual actors and their private property rights, particularly in the short-term pursuit of profit, over a robust commitment to ensuring the public’s investment in long-term access to environmental goods and resources.⁴⁹ Thus, the development of a single property would be interpreted as a rational, individual act rather than part of a broader pattern of growth with a cumulative environmental impact. The concept of the tragedy of the commons cut to the heart of modern environmentalism, which insisted that law, policy, and cultural values needed to evolve to promote a more ecologically sound and equitable use of nature to counterbalance the selfish tendencies underlying private property.⁵⁰

Although citizens who supported preservation of the Burling tract felt that this served the public good more than building yet another housing development, their claims were not immune to scrutiny. Most were predominately middle- and upper-class professionals, or their children, who could afford to live in communities where large amounts of open space increased housing values.⁵¹ This charge was quite valid for groups such as the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association and reflected the tendency for higher income areas experiencing rapid growth to see popular support for open space preservation.⁵² Moreover, many residents who supported preservation failed to acknowledge how postwar housing and land use policies had privileged white middle-class interests over others.⁵³ This led a columnist for the Washington Post to recommend that the local money to help buy the Burling tract could be better spent on expanding housing and social services for lower-income residents.⁵⁴ For supporters of preserving the Burling tract to be successful, they would have to position their environmental interests as more important than the imperative for growth.⁵⁵

The Possibility of a Park

Over several months, a small but growing coalition of residents had opposed plans to develop the Burling tract. Initially, they sought to mitigate the ecological impact of building homes on the site but soon concluded that the property’s natural features should be preserved for public enjoyment. As local interest in preservation expanded, the board of supervisors held another hearing on April 8 to allow the public to air its views. In the preceding month, more than one hundred high school students had organized a petition drive to solicit support among residents in the Dranesville District for paying a special property tax assessment to help the county purchase the Burling tract for use as a nature park.

At the hearing, a group of thirty students representing Fairfax Students for Preservation of the Burling Tract delivered petitions signed by 2,300 district residents. This was an unusual statement of financial support for land preservation in a fiscally conservative county that had long been devoted to attracting suburban development.⁵⁶ The move, however, made sense given that Fairfax was experiencing rapid suburbanization, which degraded environmental resources that many residents felt were critical to their quality of life.⁵⁷ While offering to pay to preserve the Burling tract, the signatories did not expressly question the political economy underlying suburbanization or the legal and cultural endorsement of private property rights that made public acquisition the only sure way to protect the property.⁵⁸

The presence of the students at the April 8 hearing confirmed the central role of young people in the case. They testified about their interests in hiking to the waterfall on the property at Scott’s Run, confirming the influence of recreational interests on open space preservation.⁵⁹ Many of the students went to the same high school and were in the gym class of Marian Agnew, an early supporter of preservation. Some people contended that Agnew had duped her students into participating in the hearing to advance her own interests. In response, one parent wrote to a local newspaper that her son and the other students had not been “indoctrinated” but believed in their cause.⁶⁰ The prominent role that students would play in the Burling case confirmed their bona fide environmental interests.

Even with vocal civic support, the board of supervisors voted five to two to reject a civic appeal to consider its approval of the site plan. Residents in attendance loudly voiced their disapproval, forcing the board to take a fifteen-minute recess before resuming its agenda. During the break, John Adams cornered two of the supervisors who had voted against the appeal, asking them to change their votes. When the hearing resumed, one of the supervisors asked the board to reconsider its decision. In a highly unusual turn of events, the precise reasons for which are not clear, the two supervisors that Adams had lobbied changed their votes, helping to pass a 4-3 motion that retracted the board’s support for development of the Burling tract.⁶¹

Following the decision, the board asked the county’s park authority to consider the feasibility of buying the Burling tract to serve as the district park for the Dranesville District.⁶² If it reached a positive conclusion, the board would put the property on the county’s public facility map, giving it the ability to issue $600,000 in bonds that had been approved by voters in 1966 for a district park.⁶³ Three weeks later, and just a few days after the first Earth Day was celebrated in communities across the United States, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors held a hearing on the results of the district park study. The park authority concluded that the Burling tract had the qualities needed for a district part, emphasizing its natural features, its location adjacent to the Potomac, and its accessibility to over seven thousand residents within a two-mile radius.⁶⁴ Even with the county park authority’s endorsement, which allowed the county to issue $600,000 in bonds, and the offer of $1.2 million from the Interior Department, the existing financing was still not enough to buy the land.

Elected officials remained unconvinced of preservation. Harriet Bradley reaffirmed her support for the developer’s project for its compliance with the local master plan and for offering several measures to mitigate the impact of development, including fifty-six acres of parkland. She was also skeptical about of the petition drive undertaken by Fairfax Students for Preservation of the Burling Tract, insisting that residents did not know they were expressing support for paying part of the costs for acquiring the Burling tract.⁶⁵ The students responded by conducting another petition drive, obtaining 2,350 signatures over the next month.⁶⁶

The growing movement to preserve the Burling tract suggested that people were more responsive to environmental issues when they felt an intimate connection with nature. Initially, residents affiliated with the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association had gotten involved in a “backyard” case to scale down prospective development at the site to curb the erosion of its hilly terrain and runoff into the Potomac. Over time, however, the tract’s wildness became a source of admiration as more citizens desired to preserve its amenities. This included “the dramatic bluffs of the palisades, the breathtaking waterfall of Scott’s Run, the Potomac River frontage, the abundant wildlife, the unique array of wildflowers, and scientifically acclaimed forest of high quality tulip, oak, hickory, and hemlock.”⁶⁷ As local residents came to interpret expansive development as destructive, preservation advocates gained ground in their fight to protect the Burling tract.⁶⁸ Developing an appreciation for nature and the various roles it fulfilled thus went a long way to cultivating a sense of responsibility for its protection.⁶⁹

With local environmentalism on the rise, the board of supervisors agreed in early May to allow residents of the Dranesville District to vote on whether they would pay a special tax to help the county purchase the Burling tract for a public park. Although officials intended the ballot measure to be advisory, the county attorney concluded that if voters approved the tax, the outcome would be legally binding and enforceable by the local circuit court.⁷⁰ A week later, Gordon Smith announced that his development firm, after ten months, had finally purchased the Burling tract for $3.36 million and was planning to proceed with their approved development project.⁷¹ Because the purchase price exceeded the funds available from the Interior Department and a local park acquisition bond, the special tax assessment—estimated at $1.5 million—was a prerequisite for acquiring the Burling tract.

On May 28, the Fairfax planning commission held the tenth public hearing on the Burling tract, at the request of the board of supervisors, to outline the costs to homeowners of the referendum measure. While familiar points of view were aired in what had become an intense debate, the atmosphere was incredibly lively. Cameras from a national television station recorded a public hearing that drew over two hundred attendees. Fifty-one people signed up to speak, most favoring preservation. Many in attendance were local teenagers, several of whom broke with the traditional approach of offering written and oral testimony to be more creative. Some of the youth showed a film explaining the merits of preserving open spaces. The high point of the meeting, and a watershed moment in the case, came when high school student Susan Daniel performed a folk song she had written in support of preserving the Burling tract.⁷²