Burke Lake Park
Fairfax County Park Authority Regional Park; The Land Was Acquired In The Early 1950s For A Proposed Washington Airport Before Dulles Was Sited At Chantilly · Fairfax Station, Virginia
Eight hundred and eighty-eight acres around a two-hundred-and-eighteen-acre lake in the middle of suburban Fairfax County, and the whole thing exists because of an airport that was never built. In the early 1950s the federal government bought up farms here for a second Washington airport, then changed its mind and chose Chantilly instead, which became Dulles; the land was sold on to Fairfax County at the end of the decade and dammed. What the county made of it is the most useful park in Northern Virginia. The 4.5-mile loop trail around the lake is the region's default long run and is almost perfectly flat; there is a campground, which is rare this close to Washington, a par-three golf course, a disc golf course, rental rowing boats, a miniature train that runs the summer, a carousel, an ice cream parlour, and a heavily used boat ramp with an electric-motor-only rule that keeps the water quiet. It is also genuinely good for birds - the lake pulls in migrating waterfowl, ospreys nest on it, and the wooded far shore is much emptier than the marina end suggests.
7315 Ox Road, Fairfax Station, Virginia, 22039, United States
Park open daily, generally dawn to dusk. The marina, boat rental, miniature train, carousel, snack bar and golf course are SEASONAL and run mainly from spring to early autumn with weekend-only shoulder seasons - check before promising them. Campground open seasonally by reservation. Non-resident parking charge applies on summer weekends and holidays.