Second and Third Oakton Schools (1874-1912)

After the Civil War devastated the Flint Hill community, laying farms and land to waste and leaving widespread poverty, construction of a new school was delayed. Virginia officially established a free public school system in 1870 under the 1869 Reconstruction Constitution for Virginia, and in 1874 Gilson R. Whaley transferred the deed to one acre of land with a recently built schoolhouse to the Trustees of the School Board of Providence District for a Flint Hill public school. Located at the northeast corner of Hunter Mill Road and what is now Chain Bridge Road, this second school did not serve the black community, and classes continued there until the building was moved to Jermantown Road in 1897 and became a private residence. Flint Hill was renamed Oakton in 1883, so the third area schoolhouse, built in 1897 a few yards east of the earlier one, became known as the Oakton Schoolhouse. From 1897 to 1912, the surviving structure served as a school, community center, and religious meetinghouse. An annex built in the summer of 1904 increased capacity to 45 students by January 1905. After its fifteen years as a school, the building was used as a private residence, a multi-family residence, a retail hardware store, and Appalachian Outfitters, a popular camping and outdoor activity supply store. In January 2007, the historic building, stripped of twentieth-century additions, was moved from Chain Bridge Road to this park through a private-public effort, and the same partnership funded its rehabilitation and restoration to its 1897 appearance.

Oakton, Virginia · United States