Nova News
THROWBACK THURSDAY—NOVA PARKS—HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
On this day in 1959, NOVA Parks came into existence!
Creating the first regional park system in Virginia was not easy. Since the early 1950’s efforts were underway to create the park authority. The Virginia Park Authorities Act finally allowed two or more adjacent jurisdictions to form a regional park authority. On September 26, 1959, Arlington County Board adopted the resolution creating the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority. Then on October 7th Fairfax County Board of Supervisors adopted the same resolution, followed by the City Council for Falls Church on October 12th. The agency was born!
This was such a great idea that the City of Fairfax joined in 1964, the City of Alexandria in 1969, and Loudoun County in 1973.
As one of the earliest regional organizations in the area, the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority and the partnership that led to the creation of large iconic parks started creating the identity of Northern Virginia as a region. In 2014 we stopped trying to make everyone remember the very long name of “Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority” and started going by just “NOVA Parks.”
The agency has never stopped growing and today we have 12,200 acres and 34 regional parks throughout the region.
Thank you, to the far-sighted civic leaders of the 1950s who recognized that working as a region we could develop some of the best parks in the County.
