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.
In Arlington, the stream passes from the Piedmont through the fall line to the Atlantic Coastal Plain in a deep forested valley. The stream's eastern section forms the boundary of Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. The stream eventually empties out into the Potomac River immediately south of National Airport.
The name Four Mile Run does not derive from its length, but was, in fact, a misreading of an old map. An old flour mill near the Potomac gave the stream the name of "Flour Mill Run", but the map had faded letters. Four Mile Run runs into the tidal Four Mile Creek within 1 mile (2 km) of the mouth of the stream.
Read more about Four Mile Run: History, Tributaries, Parks, Trails, Gunston Middle School Volunteerism
Famous quotes containing the words mile and/or run:
“For half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak.... This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,—more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a harbor.... It was the roaring sea, thalassa exeessa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)