Surrounded by dairy farms and served by the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad, the people and businesses along Ashburn Road that formed the core of the village held their ground through the Great Depression and two World Wars.
In addition to serving as a major shipping point for the milk produced in Loudoun and sent to Alexandria and Washington, D.C., the railroad hauled bulk freight and carried passengers until overtaken by the improved regional highway system, and the move toward personal cars and trucking companies.
In the village, the small-town spirit remained, with the focus on family, church and the community school.
One of the more significant events at mid-century was the establishment of the Ashburn Fire Company. Following the disastrous fire that destroyed the Ashburn School on Feb. 14, 1944, and the tragic deaths of two neighborhood children in a house fire the following April, the people of Ashburn decided that something must done. The fire company at Leesburg was just too far away.
A group including Will Hay, William Fletcher and Rev. Edward Hughes met in March 1945 at Calvary Baptist Church to organize the Ashburn Auxiliary Fire Brigade, “for the purpose of saving lives.” J. R. Downs, who had a gas station at nearby Mahala (where Ashburn Road once intersected with Route 7) and had been in charge of the Ashburn Observation Post during World War II, was elected president of the new organization.
The fire company was incorporated on April 23, 1945, and fundraising to build a firehouse began in August. In October 1946, Emma Harding sold a lot on Ashburn Road in the village to the firemen for $350, and promptly made a donation of $50 to the building campaign. The original building–which would later have two substantial additions on property bought from the Partlow brothers–was completed in 1947. The first fire fighting apparatus was a 1928 American LaFrance engine. Later, a 1948 GMC fire truck was purchased, and in 1951 was part of the central alarm service.
The character of the village began to change after the trains stopped running; the rails were pulled up and the depot demolished in the 1960s. With fewer and fewer dairy farms in the area and the industrial base provided by the railroad gone, emphasis shifted to commercial and residential development in the area.
The Ashburn Fire Company continued to grow, expanding their building on the north side to accommodate additional equipment in 1963.
Population growth in the eastern part of the county was coming, with development already taking place in Broad Run Farms and Sterling Park. But even into the 1970s, the old village held on.
Jack Lawlor, a retired Navy officer who has a real estate office in Ashburn, moved with his family to an old home on Jenkins Lane in 1975. He recalls that Ashburn still had the small-town feel that he had enjoyed at his previous home on an island off the coast of Maine.
“In those days, people met at three places to share what was going on: the post office, Partlow’s Store, and the firehouse,” said Lawlor. “You knew everybody that you ran into.”
There were nine children in his family, and Lawlor jokes that at one time, “Lawlor children made up 5 percent (four out of 79) of the student body” at the old Ashburn school on Partlow Lane. For a while, traffic on Ashburn Road was manageable, and the children walked to school.
Next: New Growth Surrounds Old Ashburn
This is really cool. Who would have thought that so much would have developed in 50-60 years? Thanks for sharing this. It is always neet to drive through Old Ashburn and get a glimpse of what Ashburn once was.
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