Virginia’s Mount Vernon Trail: September 2026 Trail of the Month
About the Trail
Northern Virginia’s Mount Vernon Trail is an 18.5-mile, primarily paved pathway connecting Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County. It follows the Potomac River, offering views of Washington, D.C., and access to numerous parks, historical sites and city centers.
The Mount Vernon Trail experience could be summed up in just one word: connection. Tracing the western bank of the Potomac River, the Northern Virginia trail connects an astonishing array of historical sites, natural areas and city amenities along its 18.5-mile route as it links Arlington and Alexandria and provides easy access to Washington, D.C., across the river. But it connects something intangible, too—the social fabric that binds us.
“The trail has really helped me find community in life,” said Judd Isbell, president and co-founder of the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail. “There are very few times where I’m riding on the trail that I don’t pass somebody that I know. And one of my favorite things is that if I’m out on the trail volunteering, I will sometimes get a wave, or someone will stop for a trail chat. Those are just nice day brighteners.”
It was one of those chance encounters that led Susan Barron to join the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail herself. A retired resident living just steps from the trail in the bustling Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Barron walks the trail for about 6 miles every other day.
“Years ago, when I was walking the trail, I started seeing the same trash every day and the same things that needed to be done, so I started picking up trash and bought myself a pair of clippers, and in some places where plants were encroaching onto the trail, I started taking it upon myself to clip them,” said Barron. “And one day, I saw Judd out there doing something and I just asked him, ‘Is it okay to be doing this?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely!’ And he and I became friendly, and it has continued from there.”
Today, the organization tracks some 4,400 volunteer hours spent on the trail each year that includes picking up trash, trimming branches, removing invasive species and making minor repairs to keep the busy trail, which sees some 1.4 million visits annually, in tip-top shape. Many of these hours come from the volunteer steward events—what Isbell calls the organization’s “bread and butter”—that the Friends group hosts nearly every weekend. And they work in close partnership with the National Park Service, who manages and maintains the trail.
It’s perhaps this community-wide devotion to the trail that helped propel its win this year in Rails to Trails Conservancy’s Hall of Fame competition, where it garnered 58% of the public vote to become the 2026 inductee.
Continuing the Legacy
That social connection and can-do spirit have been part of the trail’s DNA from its inception—and is what led to the development of the Mount Vernon Trail’s first segment.
“Ellen Pickering and Barbara Lynch were two housewives that lived in Alexandria, and they were both involved in environmental activism and riding bikes—it was the bike boom of the 1970s—and so they organized a petition drive, collected over 700 signatures and met with the National Park Service to ask if they could build a trail,” explained Isbell. “There wasn’t money for it, but they were able to work out an agreement where NPS provided the gravel, and volunteers showed up every weekend to spread the gravel with shovels. They built a 4.5-mile trail, and like all good ideas, it snowballed.”
The first section, connecting Alexandria and Washington, D.C., opened April 15, 1972. Usage of the trail was immediate, and with that success, the National Park Service kept extending the route to its current 18.5-mile length.
“It’s been 55 years since the first volunteer showed up with shovels,” Isbell said. “It was their story that made me want to continue that legacy.”
In 2018, the National Park Service was hosting stakeholder meetings about the Mount Vernon Trail to discuss possibilities for the trail and what could be improved. Isbell, who was a daily trail commuter and involved in bike advocacy, decided to attend. During the meetings, someone sent him a Washington Post article about those early volunteers, and it inspired him to recruit two of his own friends—Josephine Liu and Casey Kane—to kick-start the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail. They officially incorporated the following year and then formed a partnership agreement with the National Park Service in 2020.
A Natural Oasis
One of the defining features of the trail is its proximity to the river, and with that closeness comes an abundance of wildlife. In addition to her trash grabber and bag, Barron brings binoculars on her walks to look for osprey, eagles and other birds along the route. After observing how the ospreys, whose main diet is fish, sometimes built nests in the river’s channel markers, she joked that the ospreys “live right over the restaurant.”
Right from the start, the Mount Vernon Trail provides access to beautiful natural spaces. Near its northern end, nature lovers can take a footbridge to reach Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle of the Potomac. Named for the famed outdoorsman president, the island hosts about 3 miles of wooded trails. Farther south, the trail winds along the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, a freshwater tidal wetland especially popular with birders, as well as several other parks.
“The trail really gives residents, employees and visitors that access to nature and that access to recreation,” said Mary-Claire Burick, president of the Rosslyn Business Improvement District (BID), whose work to promote and improve the trail is part and parcel of what they do to enhance the community. “You have the ability to walk, run or bike right along the Potomac River while still enjoying all the benefits of being in an urban hub.”
Rosslyn, where Burick works, is a densely populated neighborhood of Arlington with direct ties into D.C. through the Key Bridge and a Metro subway station. While she loves the city’s plethora of amenities, it’s that closeness to the river—what she calls ‘her happy place’ as a boater and paddle boarder—that adds to the area’s specialness. “Being able to walk on the trail and see the water, it just takes my stress level from a 10 to a Zen.”
Prioritizing the Pathway
Old Town Alexandria, at the trail’s midpoint, serves as another cosmopolitan complement to the route’s natural settings. Following Union Street through town via a short on-road segment, trailgoers will be flanked by the historical redbrick architecture of this storied port city established in 1749.
“We have become much more aware and cognizant of creating a gateway and recognizing that more and more people are actually coming to visit us via the trail,” said Sarah Bagley, the vice mayor for the City of Alexandria. “They’re checking out a Capital Bikeshare bike in D.C. or renting a bike for the day or going for a walk from Gravelly Point down into Alexandria, so we activated our Old Town North Arts District. As you take the trail south and come into Alexandria, you’ll see murals and other public art right from the trail.”
Bagley also shared an example of how AlexRenew—the public wastewater treatment authority for the city—even took the trail into consideration during one of their recent major projects. “AlexRenew’s sanitary sewer tunnel project just finished and ends at the end of Pendleton Street in North Old Town,” Bagley said. “But rather than making it an industrial site, they capped off the area above it and created a public promenade where they installed swings. It’s the most charming design and execution because you don’t even realize that you’re standing over a sewer tunnel. As you come south on the trail and follow it around, you end up right at this promenade.”
As an elected official, Bagley noted that, “access to the trail and to the water and to green space is one of the things that I hear most consistently from all members of our community as a priority, so we have learned that it’s something to prioritize in our urban planning.”
Another Alexandria project in the works—one that Bagley calls “a generational opportunity”—is the upcoming reuse of an old power plant adjacent to the trail, which will reopen access to a section of the city’s waterfront that residents have been cut off from for decades.
“This group, HRP, is redeveloping that, and it’s going to turn into mixed-use housing, commercial space and some art and park space as well,” explained Isbell. “And the trail was one of the big selling points for them. People love trails, so when you can develop something and say, ‘You can literally walk from our building to the trail,’ that’s really attractive and valuable to developers.”
It’s a sentiment that’s echoed in the Rosslyn BID’s annual perception survey used to gather community feedback for future planning efforts; in the 2025 survey, more than 80% of respondents cited walkability as one of Rosslyn’s top benefits. “Every time we’re doing a perception survey, the data consistently shows mobility, walkability and connected transportation are all things that are highly valued by the community,” said Burick. “I think it’s just another wonderful point about having that trail literally minutes from the core of Rosslyn.”
History Abounds
Reaching the southern end of the trail, travelers arrive at its namesake, the Mount Vernon estate, the famed home of America’s first president. The sprawling historic site includes several gardens, a 4-acre farm, a blacksmith shop, a gristmill and more than a dozen other buildings to explore, as well as a museum and costumed interpreters for guided learning. Long before the Mount Vernon Trail was built, the Potomac River corridor served as an important route for visitors traveling to George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Todd Ketch, who owns Pedego Alexandria, a bike shop offering rentals and tours, noted that the ‘I biked it, I liked it’ stickers he hands out to those who ride the trail are a hot commodity. “Riding to the Mount Vernon estate is the number one thing that people want to do,” Ketch said. “And we get a lot of comments from people that say the bike ride was the highlight of their whole trip.”
In 2018, Ketch was “ready to do something different” after 25 years as a lobbyist when he opened his shop just off the trail. “The Mount Vernon Trail was critical to the whole thing because we’re right in the middle of it,” he said. “We have tourism here, a great city that’s done tremendous work to make it even more inviting for people to come visit, and we have great proximity to Washington, D.C., so you can ride a bike and be there in about a half an hour on a beautiful trail. We have all the things that you want to have a fully successful business—that’s why I picked this area.”
Perhaps less well-known historical sites along the trail include Fort Hunt Park, which trailgoers will pass just before getting to Mount Vernon. Now a public park, the site’s past reads like a history book: It was named after a Union artillery strategist of the Civil War, it has gun batteries that date back to the Spanish-American War, and it was once a top-secret location where captured Nazi soldiers were interrogated.
And, of course, the crown jewel at the northern end of the trail is its stunning views of the nation’s capital across the Potomac. The Washington and Lincoln Memorials are distinctive landmarks in the city’s National Mall, a museum- and monument-lined park that stretches from the water’s edge to the United States Capitol. Visitors can cross the river on the picturesque Arlington Memorial Bridge (or a handful of other bridges) to explore those iconic sites.
‘Superhighway of the Trail System’
Like the river it follows, the Mount Vernon Trail has several tributaries, linking to trails like the Custis Trail, Four Mile Run Trail and famed W&OD Trail (another Hall of Famer) along its north-south route.
“When all these connections started happening, that made the Mount Vernon Trail even more valuable and more used,” said Isbell. “The really interesting thing is that in any article from the past that you read about it, from its initial inception, people are like, ‘It needs to be widened.’ So it’s a great example of community demand for a trail that keeps getting used and then expanded. It’s sort of like the superhighway of the trail system these days.”
It’s an apt description for the trail, which is also a key segment of the developing Capital Trails Network that will connect more than 1,000 miles of trails across D.C., Maryland and Virginia, making it safer and easier for residents in the region to navigate their communities and be active.
But with more than five decades of heavy use also comes wear and tear—an issue that’s on its way to being remedied with an anticipated construction start date of early 2027. “The northern half of the trail is going to get reconstructed and widened so it’ll meet modern trail standards,” said Isbell of the project, which will span about 10 miles of the trail. “It’ll be nice smooth pavement, and it’ll do things like regrading to make it more accessible for some of the changes in elevation.”
In the meantime, the Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail will be there to keep making the trail—and people’s lives—better. “The great thing about showing up for the trail is that rich experience of the people you’ll meet,” said Isbell, sharing an example that one of their volunteer leaders works for NASA. “I only know somebody that sends stuff into outer space because we both showed up to volunteer on the trail,” he chuckled. “So for people that are looking for that in life, you’ve just got to show up to find your community.”
Related Links
Trail Facts
Name: Mount Vernon Trail
Trail website: Friends of the Mount Vernon Trail
Length: 18.5 miles
Counties: Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax
Start point/end point: Langston Blvd. and N. Lynn St. (Rosslyn); George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate (Mount Vernon)
Surface type: The trail is primarily asphalt with some boardwalk over wetland areas and a handful of bridges with a concrete surface.
Grade: While the majority of the trail is relatively flat, there’s an uphill climb for its final mile on the trail’s southern end heading to the Mount Vernon estate.
Uses: Walking, bicycling, inline skating and fishing; wheelchair accessible
Difficulty: With its paved surface and plentiful amenities, the trail is considered easy for most trail users, but be aware of the more challenging, steeper grade near the trail’s southern terminus. Also note that with the trail’s location in a busy urban area, it can get quite crowded, so please recreate responsibly and share the trail.
Getting there: The Mount Vernon Trail is directly accessible from the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (2401 Smith Blvd., Arlington); a Capital Bikeshare station and other bike-related amenities are available on site.
The trail is also accessible via the regional Metro subway system; the Metro stations most convenient to the trail are Rosslyn, Arlington Cemetery, Reagan National Airport and Braddock Road. Be sure to observe the guidelines for bringing bikes on the trains.
Additionally, Amtrak stations are located in both Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The Alexandria Station (110 Callahan Drive) is about 1.5 miles from the trail. From D.C.’s Union Station (50 Massachusetts Ave. NE), you can hop onto the Metro train system to reach the Mount Vernon Trail.
Access and parking: Several parks along the Mount Vernon Trail provide convenient parking; here are some options listed from north to south:
- Arlington: Theodore Roosevelt Island Park (George Washington Memorial Parkway, 0.4 mile north of I-66/Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge)
- Arlington: Gravelly Point (George Washington Memorial Parkway, 0.5 mile south of 1-395/Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge)
- Alexandria: Oronoco Bay Park (street parking along Madison Street)
- Alexandria: Jones Point Park (1 Jones Point Drive)
- Alexandria: Collingwood Park (8200 W. Boulevard Drive)
- Alexandria: Fort Hunt Park (8999 Fort Hunt Road)
- Mount Vernon: George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate (3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway)
To navigate the area with an interactive GIS map, and to see more photos, user reviews and ratings, plus loads of other trip-planning information, visit TrailLink, the official trail-finder website and app of Rails to Trails Conservancy.
Rentals: Capital Bikeshare offers a handful of docking stations near the Mount Vernon Trail; check out their website for details. Big Wheel Bikes offers two locations not far from the trail, one in Arlington (3119 Langston Blvd.) and one in Alexandria (110 S. Union St.). In Alexandria, Pedego Alexandria (210 North Lee St.), located steps from the trail, also offers bike rentals, as does Unlimited Biking (1199 N. Fairfax St.).
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