NOVA Parks News
THROWBACK THURSDAY--NOVA PARKS--IT ALL STARTED WITH WORMS
The year was 1966 and NOVA Parks (Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority) opened its first real park operations at Bull Run Marina. You can bet the boaters were listening to the Four Tops, The Monkees, Supremes, and the Beatles on their transistor radios.
The seven year old regional park agency had assembled over 2,000 acres with most of the land along the banks of the Bull Run and Occoquan Rivers making up the southern boundary of Fairfax County.
While there were some hiking trail and a few scout groups camping in the woods, NOVA Parks at that time had just been focused on land acquisition with little thought of how to engage the public with this new system of parks. That is why they hired Darrell Winslow. He had built a successful park system in Tennessee, and had previously run recreational facilities for the Army.
Darrell pulled out the Sears Catalogue and ordered as many Jon Boats as he could (over 65). He also ordered a shed to be used as a concessions building. He set up the first operations at Bull Run Marina a small site off of Yates Ford Road in the Clifton area. He stocked the shed with worms and sandwiches, with just one rule: keep the sandwiches on the shelf above the worm.
First day of operations was a Saturday, and by 9:00 A.M. all the boats were rented, and all the sandwiches and worms were purchased. It was a big success! They used a cigar box for a cash register, and by the end of the day it was full. When they brought the cigar box back to the headquarters they weren’t exactly sure what to do, since they had never had to make a cash deposit before.
Thousands of people were able to enjoy the river and Occoquan reservoir for the first time with this first point of public access. Today millions of people every year enjoy nature because of the great regional park system that has grown from that first experiment in regional parks.
NOVA Parks has been able to grow to over 12,000 acres and 33 popular regional parks because we have been able to bring in up to 87% of our operating funds through park enterprises like that first boat rental operations.
