New interpretive signs installed at Mason District Park

Mason District Park in Annandale has a dozen brand-new interpretive signs,
thanks to the efforts of local residents.

David Siegel, who
lives next door to the park, got the ball rolling about three years ago. He
noticed the signs had gotten “ratty” and needed to be replaced. He offered to contribute $500 to the cost of the new signs if the community and county could provide the rest.

The signs had a
special meaning for Siegel, as his daughter, now 35, learned to read and learned
about nature as they walked along the park trails decades ago. “It’s a wonderful
little park,” he says. 

He brought up the idea with Harry “Chip” McCarty,
president of the Sleepy Hollow Run-Forest
Hills Civic Association, who agreed to work on a sign project. McCarty applied to the Fairfax County Park Authority for a $1,000 Mastenbrook grant, which requires a 50 percent match from the applicant. 

The process took two years, and “there was “more bureaucracy
than the federal government,” Siegel says, but the $1,200 project was approved. The park authority also used some funds from the rental revenue from the monopole in the park. 

The new signs, put up just over a week ago, have
information about the farm families that used to live there, the park’s plants and
animals, and how the land has changed over the years.

A Park Authority intern
worked on redesigning the signs and revising the content, if needed. For
example, one of the old signs referred to a lilac bush that was no longer there,
says Tammy Schwab, manager of education and outreach in the Park Authority’s
Resource Management Division.

The project is not quite finished, Schwab says. She wants to
add a solar-powered audio box at the trail entrance so people with vision
impairments will be able to hear the same messages that are on the signs.