By Laura Longley Photo courtesy of the Conservation | Fund Oak Hill, home to President James Monroe, will be a magnificent state park. If you escaped to the beach over this year’s long Fourth of July holiday, it’s possible you missed the biggest news to reach Northern Virginia in quite a while: the approval of Virginia’s purchase of President James Monroe’s Oak Hill mansion and its 1,240 acres as a state park. On June 30, Gov. Abigail Spanberger approved the Commonwealth of

By Peyton Tochterman Christian Lyman on the run. Somewhere along the course of the Virginia Merikos 20-mile race last March, Christian Lyman found himself sitting in a truck. This was not part of the plan. The race included roughly 3,000 feet of elevation gain, the kind of course where runners learn quickly that distance on a map and distance beneath your feet are two very different things. Lyman had taken a wrong turn. By the time he was driven back to where he needed to be

By Bridge Littleton Lieutenant Mark Putnam At the end of September, the Town of Middleburg said farewell and thank you to Lieutenant Mark Putnam as he retired after more than 29 years of public safety and law enforcement service, including 13 years with the Middleburg Police Department. Mark began his career at Coffeewood Correctional Center in 1997 before joining the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in 1999. He later served with the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office and the Tow

By Leonard Shapiro Photo by Tracy Meyer Thoroughbred horses are out, caisson horses are in at the Middleburg Training Center This was the early morning at the Middleburg Training Center, a dozen hours after the U.S. Army had announced at a precisely choreographed town hall that it had closed that very same day on a contract to purchase the iconic facility to train caisson horses used in military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. The morning after, several tenants were