Four Mile Run

This article is about the stream in Virginia. For the sub-neighborhood in Pittsburgh, see Four Mile Run (Pittsburgh).
Four Mile Run
Four Mile Run near Arlington's Jennie Dean Park
Four Mile Run is located in Virginia
Four Mile Run
Location of mouth
Location
CountryUnited States
Physical characteristics
Source 
 • locationFairfax County, Virginia (paved over)
 • elevation339 feet (103 m)
Mouth 
 • location
Potomac River in Arlington County, Virginia
Length9.35 miles (15 km)
Basin size19.7 square miles (51 km2), 17 square miles (44 km2) in the non-tidal area
Basin features
GNIS feature ID1478084[1]

Four Mile Run is a 9.4-mile-long (15.1 km)[2] 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 and 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 into the Potomac River immediately south of Reagan National Airport.[3]

The name Four Mile Run does not derive from its length. A 2001 documentary film alleged that the name resulted from a misreading of an old map. The documentary stated that an old flour mill near the Potomac gave the stream the name of "Flour Mill Run", but the map had faded letters.[4] A more plausible explanation is that the mouth of Four Mile Run is approximately four miles upriver from the mouth of Hunting Creek (sometimes called Great Hunting Creek) which is formed by the confluence of Cameron Run and Hooff's Run where they join the Potomac on the southern boundary of the City of Alexandria.[5] Four Mile Run runs into the tidal Four Mile Creek within 1 mile (2 km) of the mouth of the stream.

  1. ^ "Four Mile Run". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
  2. ^ U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map Archived 2012-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, accessed August 15, 2011
  3. ^ Coordinates of Four Mile Creek at confluence with Potomac River: 38°50′26″N 77°02′44″W / 38.840443°N 77.045531°W / 38.840443; -77.045531 (Four Mile Creek at confluence with Potomac River)
  4. ^ Eckert, Dave (2001). "Reviving an Urban Stream: Four Mile Run Documentary". Film narrated by Frank Stasio. Fairfax, Virginia: Northern Virginia Regional Commission. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  5. ^ Stetson, Charles (1932), "Washington's Woods on Four Mile Run", Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vol. 35/36, Washington, D.C.: Historical Society of Washington, D.C., pp. 154–182, JSTOR 40067515