Burke, VA Facts

Burke is an unincorporated section of Fairfax County, Virginia. Burke includes two Burke, population 42,312 and the Burke Centre, population 17,518 in 2020.

Burke is named after Silas Burke (1796–1854), a 19th-century slave-owner, farmer, merchant, and local politician who built a house on a hill overlooking the valley of Pohick Creek in approximately 1824. The house still stands. When the Orange and Alexandria Railroad was constructed in the late 1840s, the railroad station at the base of that hill was named "Burke's Station" after Burke, who owned the land in the area and donated a right-of-way to the railroad company. The railroad tracks located on the same historical line are owned by the Norfolk Southern Railway and form part of the Manassas Line of the VRE system. The original Burke Station building can still be seen in the community, turned 90 degrees from its historical footprint.

The area remained predominantly rural into the mid-20th century. After WWI, Burke's population grew as federal government workers moved into the area within easy commuting distance to Washington.

In 1951, the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Administration announced plans to condemn 4,520 acres of land in Burke to construct a second airport to serve the Washington metropolitan area. After a lengthy lobbying campaign by area residents, the government in 1958 selected a different site near Chantilly, VA, which would become Washington Dulles International Airport. Land that had been purchased to build the airport was later developed into Burke Lake Park and the planned community of Burke Centre.

The first large subdivision in the vicinity, Kings Park, was constructed beginning in 1960, and was followed by many others over the next two decades, converting Burke into a densely populated suburban community.

A historic marker in Burke denotes the Huldah Coffer House, owned by a prominent resident of the county for many years. Another privately erected historical marker indicates the site of the former Lee Chapel Methodist church, which was intentionally burned in 1951 after having been abandoned for some years, but whose cemetery remains on the site.