Here’s a bit of alternate history I learned just last week: before the current site for what is now Dulles Airport, planners were looking to put a new Washington-area airport in Burke, Virginia.
Granted, if the Burke residents hadn’t mounted a resistance, we likely would have gotten a new airport in the area before John Foster Dulles was deemed an appropriate man to lend his name to an international aerodrome… and certainly before Carol Burnett obsessed about him. Why, we could have had “Henry L. Stimson Airport” or “Cordell Hull International!” If they were keeping with Secretaries of State, George C. Marshall seems like a good choice. Of course, that would mean that some people would push back on BWI Airport getting Thurgood Marshall‘s name, but the are already has 147 Glebe Roads… and that’s just in Arlingon. Why not two Marshalls? (Plus, the three-letter code for Washington-area airports could be MMR).
But leave such increasingly silly alternative histories on hold for the moment and take a few minutes to read Mike Grinnell’s piece for Greater Greater Washington. It’s a bit of local history I never knew that might be news to you as well.