Dale City, VA Facts

Dale City is in Prince William County Virginia, located 25 miles south west of Washington DC. It is an annex of Woodbridge, Virginia. As of 2020, the total population was 72,088.

The community is roughly bounded by Hoadly Road to the northwest, Prince William Parkway to the north, Smoketown Road to the northeast, Gideon Drive to the east, and Cardinal Drive to the south.

Dale City was the idea of a real estate developer, Cecil Don Hylton, who chose the term because it aptly describes the "hills and dales" of the rolling Virginia Piedmont where he developed the community. Hylton began his career as a "huckster", a young man who sold farm goods and produce at the farmers' market in Washington, DC. He later began a sod business after several requests from his regular clients. He ran several dozen trucks and pioneered new technologies in the industry. After the post-war housing boom, he moved into homebuilding. Throughout his career, he constructed apartments, commercial shopping centers, and over 22,000 homes. Along the way, he began his own sewer company, Dale Service Company, as well as the first cable television companies in Prince William County.

His company, Hylton Enterprises, began Dale City in 1960 approximately 1 mile east of Interstate 95 and continued to build west towards Hoadly Road (State Route 642). By 1969, the first six communities were completed. Many more were added in the 1970s and 1980s.

Several places in Dale City are named after Hylton, such as C.D. Hylton High School and the Hylton Memorial Chapel. More recently, the Hylton Foundation underwrote a major new addition to Potomac Hospital in nearby Woodbridge. Hylton's companies have branched into new markets, especially real estate of existing houses. Hylton Realty now sells property in and near Dale City. Hylton Enterprises manages commercial properties still controlled by the Hylton family, including several shopping centers, as well as several oddly-shaped parcels of unimproved land. These parcels were land that could not be built on or were proffered to the county; Andrew Leitch Park is one such parcel that has been given to the local Park Authority.

Because Dale City was built before most of eastern Prince William County was developed, it has its own water and sewer systems, separate from the ones in Occoquan, Woodbridge, Dumfries, Triangle, and Lake Ridge.