Sterling, Virginia refers most specifically to a census-designated place (CDP) in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. The population of the CDP as of the 2010 United States Census was 27,822. The CDP boundaries are confined to a relatively small area between Virginia State Route 28 on the west and Virginia State Route 7 on the northeast, excluding areas near SR 606 and the Dulles Town Center.
The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests is an administrative entity combining two U.S. National Forests into one of the largest areas of public land in the Eastern United States. The forests cover 1.8 million acres (7,300 km2) of land in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Approximately 1 million acres (4,000 km2) of the forest are remote and undeveloped and 139,461 acres (564 km2) have been designated as wilderness areas, which prohibits future development.
The Fairfax County Parkway, numbered State Route 286, is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia, acting as an arterial route in Fairfax County with a mix of interchanges and signalized and unsignalized intersections. Its alignment runs from southeast to northwest and roughly corresponds to part of the once-proposed Outer Beltway around Washington, D.C. The first segment of the roadway opened in 1987; the road was completed in 2010.
The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park is a linear regional park in Northern Virginia. The park's primary feature is the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Trail, an asphalt-surfaced paved rail trail that runs through densely populated urban and suburban communities as well as through rural areas. Most of the trail travels on top of the rail bed of the former Washington and Old Dominion Railroad, which closed in 1968.
The Mount Vernon Trail (MVT) is a 17-mile (27 km) long shared use path that travels along the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Northern Virginia between Rosslyn and George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. The trail connects the easternmost portions of Arlington County, the City of Alexandria, and Fairfax County, and travels mostly on dedicated trail with a small portion on city streets. As part of U.S. Bike Route 1, the Potomac Heritage Trail and the East Coast Greenway, the MVT opened in April 1972 as a gravel path and was subsequently expanded and paved.
The Colonial Pipeline is the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the U.S. The pipeline – consisting of two tubes – is 5,500 miles (8,850 km) long and can carry 3 million barrels of fuel per day between Texas and New York.
Four Mile Run is a 9.4-mile-long (15.1 km) stream in Northern Virginia that starts near Interstate 66, at Gordon Avenue in Fairfax County and proceeds southeast through Falls Church to Arlington County in the U.S. state of Virginia. Most of the stretch is parkland and is paralleled by two paved non-motorized transport and recreational trails, the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail and the Four Mile Run Trail.
The Custis Trail is a hilly 4.5 miles (7.2 km)-long shared use path in Arlington County, Virginia. The asphalt-paved trail travels along Interstate 66 (I-66) between Rosslyn and the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail at Bon Air Park.
Difficult Run is a 15.9-mile-long (25.6 km) tributary stream of the Potomac River in Northern Virginia in the United States. The area has had many historical uses dating back to the early 1800s. Today, the area is used recreationally by visitors interested in the watershed's variety of options including hiking, biking, fishing, boating, climbing, and bird watching. The wildlife at Difficult Run is vast as 163 different species can be seen depending on the season. There are 41 different soil types found on the trail and alongside the stream. The stream is part of the greater 57.7- square-mile Drainage basin, or watershed, located in the north-central portion of Fairfax County and drains directly to the Potomac River.
The Great Indian Warpath (GIW)—also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, or the Seneca Trail—was that part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans which ran through the Great Appalachian Valley. The system of footpaths extended from what is now upper New York to deep within Alabama. Various Indians traded and made war along the trails, including the Catawba, numerous Algonquian tribes, the Cherokee, and the Iroquois Confederacy. The British traders' name for the route was derived from combining its name among the northeastern Algonquian tribes, Mishimayagat or "Great Trail", with that of the Shawnee and Delaware, Athawominee or "Path where they go armed".
High Bridge Trail State Park is a rail trail in Southside Virginia converted from a rail line last belonging to Norfolk Southern.
Dominion Energy, Inc., commonly referred to as Dominion, is an American power and energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia that supplies electricity in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and supplies natural gas to parts of Utah, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Dominion also has generation facilities in Indiana, Illinois, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
The Sugarland Mountain Trail is an American hiking trail, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of Sevier County, Tennessee. The trail traverses Sugarland Mountain, a massive ridge running perpendicular to the main crest of the Smokies and effectively dividing the park's north-central section from its northwestern section. Sugarland Mountain is flanked by the deep upper valleys of two of the park's major watersheds— the West Fork of the Little Pigeon River and Little River. The trail passes through several forest types, including deciduous forest at lower elevations, heaths ("hells") along the mountain's backbone formations, and a stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest in the upper elevations. Occasional breaks in the foliage allow for views of Mount Le Conte and Sevier County to the east and Blanket Mountain and the ridges above Elkmont to the west.
The Virginia Capital Trail (VCT) is a dedicated, paved bicycle and pedestrian trail crossing four counties and 51.7 miles (83.2 km) between Jamestown and Richmond, Virginia — that is, between the Colony of Virginia's first capital and Virginia's current capital, with an alternate end at Williamsburg, the last colonial capital. Construction began in 2006 and completed to Jamestown in October 2015. With the Williamsburg extension, the blacktop ribbon extends approximately 62 miles, and attracted 1.2 million users in 2021.
The Bluemont Junction Trail is a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) asphalt-paved rail trail in Arlington County, Virginia, that the Arlington County government constructed along a former branch of the defunct Washington and Old Dominion Railroad. The shared use path travels southwest from Ballston through Bluemont Junction Park to Bluemont Junction. The trail connects Ballston to the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail and the Four Mile Run Trail in and near Bluemont Park.
Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park is the largest woodland park in an East Coast city, constituting a contiguous area of 1,216 acres (492 ha). Envisioned as a "stream valley park" to protect Baltimore's watersheds like the Gwynns Falls from overdevelopment and to preserve their natural habitats, Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park today offers a rare opportunity for the public to explore a diverse natural environment characterized by stream valleys, ridge tops, and meadows; enjoy opportunities for active recreation; and experience historic structures from an earlier era.
Sugarland Run is a planned community and census-designated place in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 11,799. In 2020, it was estimated to be 12,956. Sugarland Run is part of the Washington metropolitan area and is 26 miles (42 km) by road northwest of Washington, D.C.
The Four Mile Run Trail is a 7-mile long, paved shared use path in Arlington County, Virginia. It runs along Four Mile Run from Benjamin Banneker Park in Falls Church to the Mount Vernon Trail near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where Four Mile Run empties into the Potomac River. The trail runs roughly parallel to parts of the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail as it follows Four Mile Run, sometimes on the other side of the stream.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was a planned natural gas pipeline slated to run 600 miles (970 km) from West Virginia, through Virginia, to eastern North Carolina. It was canceled in July 2020.
United States Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Assn., 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the permitting of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline under the Appalachian Trail in the George Washington National Forest. At issue was conflicting agencies and laws for those agencies. The permit was issued by United States Forest Service (USFS) which has responsibility of the national forest, while the Trail itself is part of the National Park Service (NPS), and which under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 does not allow any other government agency to issue right of way permits through its lands. In the 7–2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that due to how the NPS was assigned the Trail by the Department of the Interior, it did not transform the lands within the trail to lands of the NPS and were still within the USFS's purview, and thus ruled that the USFS could issue the permit. The case had been consolidated with Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association .
