Around Accotink Creek, Indigenous people originally lived as semi-sedentary hunters and gatherers who moved seasonally, spoke varying forms of the Algonquin language, and relied on the river system for transportation, fishing, hunting, gathering, farming, and toolmaking from local quartz and other materials. As Europeans advanced along the waterways in the early 17th century, Native Americans were slowly pushed off their lands. In 1851, the Orange and Alexandria Railroad built a trestle that connected Alexandria with Virginia’s interior and improved the exchange of raw materials and imported goods. During his 28 December 1862 raid on nearby Burke’s Station, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart sent 12 men under Fitz Lee to burn the railroad bridge over Accotink Creek, while also tearing up rails and cutting telegraph lines before withdrawing; the trestle was later rebuilt, continued carrying Union supplies during the war, and was rebuilt again in 1917 of wrought iron and later of concrete and steel. In 1912, the War Department bought land that had once been part of William Fairfax’s 1741 Belvoir estate for a summer camp and rifle range for the engineering corps at Washington Barracks, and with the outbreak of World War I the camp became a more permanent post named Camp A. A. Humphreys. When the Army Corps of Engineers planned to move there permanently in 1919, a dependable water source was needed, and in 1918 the Springfield Dam was built to create Lake Accotink as a safe, stable reservoir. Built at a cost of $100,000 by the Amburson Construction Company, the reservoir covered 110 acres and reached 23 feet deep, but later shrank because of siltation from storm water runoff. Camp A. A. Humphreys is now Fort Belvoir, and after Springfield developed during the 1950s Fort Belvoir shifted to the Alexandria Water Company, leaving Lake Accotink no longer necessary as a water source; military officers then used it as a retreat until the Fairfax County Park Authority leased it in 1960 and bought the land at half price in 1965 under the federal Land to Parks program.