Dairy Barn Complex
Historic Blenheim
“The outlook for agriculture in Fairfax is dismal.”County Agent R.B. Davis, Jr., 1946
Why was Davis so pessimistic? As he wrote, Blenheim owner Marguerite “Daisy” Duras’s diary cows were setting production records. Just seven years earlier in 1939, her Uncle Harry P. Willcoxon’s dairies were lauded for bringing “Fairfax milk into favorable notice in city markets.” Grandfather Alfred Willcoxon helped found the Central [Fairfax] Farmers Club; he grew corn, hay, wheat, and oats as one of Fairfax’s principal farmers.
But suburbia came swiftly to Fairfax. World War II’s population boom doomed Fairfax’s agricultural economy. “Having decided to discontinue the dairy business,” Duras and her daughter Barbara advertised an auction of “Dairy Cows, Dairy Equipment and Machinery” in September 1948. Three months later, The Fairfax Herald advertised corn for sale at the “former Willcoxon Farm.”
Rezoning Blenheim to suburban residential use began by 1953. By the end of the decade, the process transformed the Willcoxon Farm into today’s neighboring suburbs.
Marker can be reached from Old Lee Highway.
Courtesy hmdb.org
