Explore a Park: Roundtree Park has been recently upgraded

The newly remodeled picnic shelter at Roundtree Park. [Keith Pham]

This article is part of the Annandale Blog’s Explore a Park series. Previous parks in the series include Manassas Gap Park, Luria Park, and Fitzhugh Park in Annandale and Lillian Carey Park and Hogge Park in Bailey’s Crossroads. 

Features – Roundtree Park is on Annandale Road in the Falls Church area of Mason District. The 73-acre park has a picnic pavilion with restrooms, playground, tennis courts with pickleball markings (but no pickleball net), basketball courts, soccer field, softball field, and trails.

An old stone wall remains from the park’s farmland past.

Access – The parking lot is on Annandale Road. Roundtree Park can also be accessed from the Holmes Run Stream Valley Trail and dead ends on Ted Drive, Vagabond Drive, and Casilear Road.

Improvements – The Fairfax County Park Authority completed an upgrade of the park in 2020. The improvements, funded by a 2016 park bond, include a new playground and tot lot, a renovation of the picnic shelter, repaved trails, resurfaced sports courts, and a new bridge over the Cow Branch of Holmes Run.

A ghost – There have been sightings of the ghost of a woman carrying a baby. She reportedly torments visitors on foggy nights.

Picnic rentals – The picnic shelter can be rented for $105 for the whole day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays and $75 for other days. The maximum capacity is 60. Call 703-324-8732 to make a reservation.

The path from Roundtree Park to the Holmes Run Stream Valley Trail.

History – There are remnants of a stone wall in the park, but it is not known when the wall was built.

An aerial photo from 1937, provided by John Rutherford of the Park Authority’s Archaeology Research Team, shows the Rosenberger Farm on the northern section of what later became Roundtree Park. It also shows another farm at the southwestern end. The Holmes Run Grist Mill was located on Holmes Run north of Annandale Road around 1860.

The following information is from the Virginia Room at the Fairfax County Library:

An 1860 map shows that Mary Mason owned the land now occupied by Putnam Street, and Henrietta Swann and Fenton Fitzhugh owned what would become Roundtree Park. Mary Mason, the sister of Henrietta and Fenton, was married to Maynadier Mason, the grandson of George Mason IV (1725-1792).

The tennis courts have pickleball markings.

Mary, Henrietta, and Fenton’s parents were Mordecai and Frances Fitzhugh. Mordecai Fitzhugh owned the land where Roundtree Park is now located but did not live there. That land was previously part of the 20,000-acre Ravensworth Tract owned by Mordecai’s great grandfather William Fitzhugh.

Fenton Fitzhugh was listed as a farmer in the 1870 and 1880 censuses. His will left all his property to his sisters, Mary and Henrietta. It seems to have stayed in Mary Mason’s family until her son sold it in 1912. The purchaser, George Atkinson, was a farmer. By 1940, the land was owned by a postal carrier, although he might have also done some farming.

Related story: Explore a Park: Ecological restoration and history at Fitzhugh Park in Annandale

The bulk of the parcel that had been owned by Henrietta Swann Clowes went to Mary Mason’s son James. Other parcels went to a niece and to the people who cared for her in her later years.

James Mason sold his parcel to a man named Sergeant Anderson, who in turn sold it to Raphael Casilear, who appears as a farmer in census records. When Casilear died, his will left his property, called Brook Farm, to several women during their lifetimes, and after the death of all of them, to the Washington City Orphan Asylum.

In 1965 the surviving woman (Violet) sold the land to the Park Authority. Because Violet was still alive, the orphan asylum never technically owned the land and thus never built an orphanage on the property. The Park Authority acquired several other parcels in the mid-1960s.