The scenic Nathaniel Ellicott footbridge over the Occoquan River got a bit of a facelift this week.

The bridge links the town in Prince Willaim County to the Vulcan rock quarry in Fairfax County. A spillway makes for a serene waterfall near the bridge. Before Hurricane Agnes in 1972, the bridge carried traffic on Route 123 over the river. The storm washed away the bridge, and a new one was built.

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A coffeehouse or a restaurant at the Workhouse Arts Center? 

The artisan destination in Lorton says construction work to add these amenities has begun with two campus buildings, W13 and W15. Once completed, the Fairfax County Government will lease these buildings to commercial entities. Workhouse officials also say a brewery could be located in one of the new buildings.

Over the years, the Workhouse became a community center for residents in southern Fairfax and eastern Prince William counties. In addition to the visual and performing arts, the Workhouse will host the final weekend of its Haunt: Nightmare Harvest Halloween trail this weekend, Friday, November 4, and Saturday, November 5, from 7 to 11 p.m.  

The Workhouse Arts Foundation, Inc. is working with Fairfax County on a Master Campus Planning process to ensure that the initial vision of the entire Arts Center is still viable. That initial plan was envisioned in addition to the currently occupied visual and performing art components. This arts complex would include an amphitheater, professional theatre, event, and education center. 

The Workhouse sits on the land that used to house a prison operated by Washington, D.C. In 2004, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors rezoned the Campus, allowing the Lorton Arts Foundation to repurpose the area through the adaptive reuse of the existing historic structures and the construction of new buildings with a mix of uses including theaters, artist studios, an events center, museums, a music barn, other similar facilities, restaurants, commercial recreation, and housing for resident artists/performers to establish the Campus as a unique arts, cultural and recreational resource for the community. 

Eleven historic buildings sitting on the Workhouse Arts Campus have been restored. The Campus was originally envisioned to include: artists’ studios, a prison museum, and community heritage center, an art gallery, and an events center for weddings, receptions, and conferences. 

With up to 600 seats, a 300-seat performing arts center consisting of black box or flexible space that may also be used for events center uses a theater with 450 seats, a music hall with 300 indoor seats and up to 500 outdoor lawn seats, an outdoor horticultural display area with a 2,424 square feet of indoor display area/greenhouse, and the adaptive reuse of other historic structures to support the arts center such as office space and storage. 

Also located on the Campus is an 82,500-square-foot green space known as the Quad and nearly 1,000 parking spaces. The Workhouse Arts Center sits at 9518 Workhouse Way in Lorton.

Occoquan will kick off a series of Halloween events, starting tonight with the 1988 classic “Beetlejuice.”

The event series is called Spirits & Spirits in historic Occoquan and will provide fun activities for adults, children, and families. Tonight, it’s “Beetlejuice: on the big screen at River Mill Park. The movie stars Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, and Gina Davis. The movie starts at 7 p.m., and tickets are $10 each or 2 for $15, available online or at the door. Popcorn, candy, and beverages will be available in the park. Children under 12 are free.

Murder mystery trivia night is ?Friday, October 28, at 6:30 p.m., also at River Mill Park.
Participants will play six rounds of seasonally themed brain busters for their chance to win the $100 gift card. Teams of up to eight people are welcome, and attendees should bring camp chairs or blankets.

Food, drinks, alcohol, and treats are available for purchase. Registration is $30 for the whole team. Tickets are available online or at the door.

The Haunted Maze is Saturday, October 29, from 5 until 10 p.m. at 305 Mill Street. Patriot Scuba will host the maze, rated PG-13 for adults, brave, and older children. Participants will enter through the spooky spirit harden, then navigate through 15 themed areas full of scary skeletons, creepy crawlies, and ghoulish goblins. There will also be 32 scare zones featuring the Grim Reaper.

All event proceeds from the Haunted Maze & Spirit Garden benefit the local non-profit Patriots for Disabled Divers. Admission to the maze is $10 for ages 13 and older and $5 for children 12 and under. The maze is not recommended for young children.

Tickets are available online or at the door. The DIVE Bar is located just outside the maze in the Spirit Garden. Attendees may purchase drinks and dance to music from a DJ. No tickets are required.

Free shuttle service will be available on Saturday, October 29, from 5 until 11 p.m. Park at the Rt. 123/Old Bridge commuter lot and be taken directly to the Haunted Maze and Spirit Garden.

A costume parade and contest is on October 29 at 10 a.m. on Mill Street and River Mill Park, which sits at the end of Mill Street.

The event runs until noon. Mayor Earnie Porta will lead the parade down

Judging categories include cutest, scariest, funniest, most original, and family/group. First-place winners in each costume category will be awarded $25 gift certificates that can be used in select businesses throughout town.

The event is free. Parade participants will line up near the Riverwalk Shops at 125 Mill Street. Free hayrides will be available in the park, too.

On Friday and Saturday, October 28 and 29, you can stroll Occoquan and vote for the best decorations, costumes, and jack-o-lanterns at your favorite businesses. Cast your vote in the red mailbox at Town Hall and be entered to win gift cards to use around Occoquan. Voting ballots are available at all participating businesses.

The small shops in town will be open late on Saturday, October 29, until at least 8 p.m.

Occoquan sits on the bank of the Occoquan River in Prince William County, just off Route 123 near Woodbridge.

Nearly 130 volunteers cleaned up the Occoquan River on Saturday, October 15.

Volunteers removed 168 bags of trash from the river. They found rusted chairs, iron beams, pillows, buckets, and seat cushions.

Volunteers cleaned and recycled soccer and petite balls while they piled up 18 tires and marked them for removal.

American Water and Fairfax Water employees, Ner Shalom Synagogue members, South County Key Club, Boy Scout Troop 1369, Forest Park High School students, Lake Ridge Middle School Environmental Club students, Nova GO kayakers, George Mason’s Power Lifting Club, and many families helped with the cleanup.

Friends of the Occoquan organized the event, a non-profit dedicated to preserving the cleanliness of the 25-mile river, which flows from the confluence of Broad and Cedar runs near Manassas to the Potomac River.

Chair Ann Wheeler acknowledged that the Prince William Digital Gateway CPA review was “confusing” and announced a delay in bringing it to the Board of County Supervisors for a vote.

Despite the compromised nature of the September 14th Planning Commission public hearing, there was no mention of invalidating its recommendation or conducting a new hearing under more trustworthy conditions.  So, you can expect the pause is merely designed to give weary citizens time to forget.

Now we must pivot almost immediately to another public hearing on updates to the county’s comprehensive plan this Wednesday evening.

The comprehensive plan is an exhaustive document that the average citizen cannot possibly digest and review in a single evening.  We would normally rely on professional government staff and our elected officials to look out for our best interests.

Unfortunately, we have very recently been reminded that they cannot be trusted to do so.  It is far more likely that they intend to sneak sweetheart deals for their developer cronies past us, literally in the dark of night.

Unless you have the time and expertise to interpret the myriad changes, you won’t notice subtle alterations with significant impacts.  Watch for blanket zoning recharacterizations that sidestep contentious CPA reviews and surreptitiously authorize data centers where public outcry would have created obstacles.  I would specifically watch for this to happen in the areas where Devlin Technology Park and John Marshall Commons were contested.

The Comprehensive Plan update is too important and sweeping to be relegated to late-night railroading.  If the Prince William Board of County Supervisors is confident of their vision for the future of this county, they should exhibit the transparency to explain it to the citizens and the courage to debate it during the upcoming 2023 election cycle.

Bill Wright
Gainesville

Occoquan kicks off the fall season with the Fall Arts & Crafts Show on September 24 and 25, 2022.

More than 200 crafters, artisans, and local boutique owners will fill the streets of the historic district with vendor booths in just a few short weeks. The Craft Show will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and will take place rain or shine.

There is no admission fee at the gate. The fee for shuttle service is $8 round trip.

“The Fall Arts & Crafts Show is a perennial favorite in the region,” says Julie Little, Events Director. “And this fall, we’re offering some exciting new experiences too, such as artisan demonstrations and a fantastic art space called Imagination Alley, where kids can create while they are here for the show. Plus, we’ll host our popular beer and wine garden and some new foodie vendors in the food court. Our award-winning restaurant scene will be open for business too. We’re looking forward to a fantastic weekend.”

ARTS & CRAFTS

Discover artisans, crafters, and makers along the streets in Occoquan’s historic district. Here, craftmanship is showcased in a wide variety of mediums and price points. Find treasures from favorite crafters and discover new talents from emerging artists.

Visitors may meet artisans, talk to them about their work, and even view demonstrations of some of their craft techniques. Look for signs in vendor tents that say, “Ask Me About My Work!”

BEER & WINE GARDEN

The Fall Arts & Crafts Show will include a been and wine garden in River Mill Park, both days from noon to 5 p.m., featuring local craft brews from Water’s End Brewery and a variety of handcrafted wines from Woodlawn Press Winery. The park situated along the river where visitors may sit and listen to music.

Collective will be the featured band on Saturday, and The Ashleigh Chevalier Band returns to Occoquan on Sunday.

IMAGINATION ALLEY

Children will want to stop by Imagination Alley to create their own art through demonstrations and workshops or add to our community art project. A teen art display and local community groups’ performances are also scheduled all weekend. Located in the center of town at 305 Mill Street, Imagination Alley will feature make-and-take projects and family fun.

• Create a card
• Transform paper into an animal
• Make a mosaic
• Learn to stitch
• Add to our community paper art project
• Get your face painted with Fairy Jennabelle
• Enjoy performances from local community groups
• Be inspired by a stroll through the Teen Art Challenge Display

Imagination Alley will be open both days, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m

SHUTTLE INFORMATION

At a cost of $8 per rider round trip, (children 12 and under ride free), visitors may park at designated lots and be transported by shuttle into Town. This fall, shuttle riders can use the EventBrite app to prepay their shuttle fees. Visitors may show the shuttle stop attendant their EventBrite receipt once they leave Occoquan. The shuttle runs for patrons from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Satellite parking can be found at three locations:

Purple Lot
Lake Ridge Commuter Lot
Corner of Old Bridge and Minnieville Roads, Woodbridge, VA
Drop off/Pick Up located at Mom’s Apple Pie Shuttle Stop

Green Lot (Garden Express!)
Rt 123 Commuter Lot
Corner of Route 123 and Old Bridge Road, Woodbridge, VA
Drop off/Pick Up at Footbridge Shuttle Stop by River Mill Park

Yellow Lot (New location)
Workhouse Arts Center
9518 Workhouse Way, Lorton, VA
Drop off/Pick Up at the Shuttle Stop under the Route 123 Bridge

There are several options for accessibility for the craft show. See occoquanva.gov/thecraftshow for more information.

While they always haven’t had a town hall in Occoquan, they’ve held regular town business meetings for years.

Town Mayor Earnie Porta tells us the town staff uncovered meeting minutes dating back about 90 years to the early 1930s. Porta says some meetings were held inside shops and inside people’s homes.

Some minutes show a New Deal project, a key public works program during the Great Depression. The project was a culvert for Ballywhack Creek, which runs into town down a slope from Old Bridge Road in Lake Ridge.

The Ballywhack flooded the town during Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, filling basements with water. The storm also damaged the Holly Acres trailer park in Woodbridge, leaving 300 homeless.

Porta notes he’s scanning the old documents for posterity and will make them available to the public, including researchers who want a glimpse of the river town’s past.

Today, the Town Council meets on the first Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. in Town Hall, 314 Mill Street.

More in an email from Porta:

Town staff have discovered Occoquan Town Council meeting minutes going back, thus far, to 1933.  To preserve them and make them readily available for researchers and others, I am scanning the documents and placing them for public access on the Occoquan Historical Society web site (www.occoquanhistoricalsociety.org).

Thus far the site contains the minutes from 1933 through 1935.  Among the information that immediately stands out:

• In the absence of a Town Hall, meetings were held in businesses and even in personal residences.
• The town participated in the very brief Civil Works Administration (CWA), a New Deal program designed to provide jobs during the winter of 1933-1934.  Occoquan’s project appears to be related to a storm sewer and possibly involved “Ballawhack branch,” our Ballywhack Creek.
• Some will note that the scans reveal that on the reverse of some pages  (I included a direct scan of the reverse of one such page) is the letterhead of the American Surety Company of New York, including an image of its iconic 19th-century building that is today a New York City landmark.  The Town Clerk at the time, B.W., Brunt, was an agent of the company, and appears to have sometimes had the minutes of the Town Council meetings typed up on the blank side of his office letterhead.

To check out this collection of historical documents at your leisure go to  https://www.occoquanhistoricalsociety.org/documents.  I will attempt to  issue updates as more are scanned and uploaded.

“The improvements … are pretty dramatic,” Occoquan Mayor Earnie Porta Jr. said at a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This has a lot of advantages for us both in terms of the way it directs traffic as well as the safety for pedestrians.”

Prince William County, the town, and the Virginia Department of Transportation, or VDOT, collaborated on the project along Mill Street between Washington and Ellicott streets. Updates to the area will improve pedestrian safety, accessibility and connectivity. The project included five crosswalks and nine ramps with detectable warning domes that comply with the American with Disabilities Act.

“The project will significantly improve pedestrian safety and accessibility and reflects the town and the county’s commitment to equity in transportation,” said Prince William Board of County Supervisors Occoquan District Supervisor Kenny Boddye. “Additionally, the project supports the town and the county’s shared goals of providing walkable destinations for residents and visitors to enjoy local establishments, recreational opportunities and the abundant natural resources and history of the town of Occoquan.”

The $310,000 project officially began in 2018 when the county and town submitted the grant application at the request of the community. Funding for the project came from a Transportation Alternatives Program, or TAP, grant.

“Although this project is relatively small in terms of transportation projects, the collaborative effort that led to this project and the impact to the community are large and worth celebrating,” Boddye said.

“This is all stuff that we could not do without the support and funding from the county and from VDOT. It’s extremely important for us to have those types of partnerships,” Porta said.

According to Boddye, the county, town and VDOT are considering cooperation on other improvement projects throughout the town.

Submitted by Prince William County Government

Occoquan officials will gather at Town Hall today to remember the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Agnes.

A new piece of art will be unveiled. The creation uses a part of The Route 123 bridge that fell during the storm, Mayor Earnie Porta said. The commemoration begins at 11 a.m. at 458 Mill Street.

The massive storm that ravaged the east coast in 1972 killed 155 people in the U.S. and caused damage to $3 billion (more than $18 billion today when adjusted for inflation).

Locally, flood waters washed out the Route 123 bridge over the Occoquan River. Today, the bridge supports remain, and a pedestrian bridge carries visitors over the river to view a waterfall on the Fairfax County side of the water.

The storm also caused the collapse of a tall bridge that carried Route 1 over the Occoquan River in Woodbridge when a barge plowed into supports built in the late 19th century.

The storm dropped so much rain that it helped crews working to build Lake Anna in Spotsylvania and Louisa counties. In 1971, crews cleared the land for the new lake that would be used to cool a nuclear reactor.

Initially, crews anticipated the lake filling with water over three years. However, Hurricane Agnes dropped so much rain that the lake filled up in just 18 months.

“Though modest in wind speeds, in terms of the damage it caused, Agnes was one of the most devastating storms in history up to that time. States to the north of Virginia also sustained heavy losses until Agnes eventually traveled northeast of Cape Breton Island and out into the North Atlantic,” Porta noted in an email in June 2022.

Agnes affected Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey residents.