An electric trolley that once connected a segregated community in South Arlington to Rosslyn in the northern part of the county will get its due in new historical signage coming to Green Valley.
While initial plans for a “You Are Here” map describing the neighborhood did not refer to the Nauck-Fort Myer line of the Washington, Arlington and Falls Church Railway (and later the Washington-Virginia Railway), the design is being revamped to include it.
That was music to the ears of civic activist Bernie Berne, who pressed the county government’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) to insist on its inclusion in efforts to detail Green Valley’s history.
The trolley line, which operated 1901-37, “spurred Green Valley’s development – it is very important,” Berne said.
The map “cannot be complete unless it describes the trolley’s route,” Berne said at the May 15 HALRB meeting.
There was no pushback. In fact, the proposal was embraced.
“I wholeheartedly agree,” said Inumidun Obikoya, a Green Valley resident and manager of the effort to bring commemorative markers to the Green Valley neighborhood.
“It is an important part of the community,” Obikoya said of the trolley system. “Transportation was a major driver of how the community was formed.”
After beginning in Rosslyn and making stops at the Fort Myer military base and Arlington National Cemetery, the trolley route snaked through central Arlington. It entered Green Valley at South Glebe Road and South Kenmore Street, running down Kenmore until it terminated at Kemper Elementary School (located near where today’s Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School can be found).
From there, riders could connect to the nearby Washington & Old Dominion rail service to points west, or even catch Southern Railway trains (for a time, a station was located in Nauck, as Green Valley then was known).
The “You Are Here” map and other historical markers soon to sprout in Green Valley are part of a broader effort to chronicle the county’s African-American heritage, an initiative being funded by Arlington government grants.
In April, Obikoya briefed HALRB members on signage proposed for Chinn-Baker Funeral Service, Friendly Cab Stand and Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, each of which was established in the mid-20th-century when the Green Valley neighborhood labored under Virginia’s segregation statutes. At the May meeting, the body took up signage honoring Veterans Memorial YMCA and the John Robinson Jr. Town Square.
Each of the designs featured “text about the site and an image or two or three,” Obikoya said.
