Old Georgetown Pike

Virginia's Old Georgetown Pike, State Route 193, was the Commonwealth's first designated scenic byway, named in 1974. It runs 11.79 miles from Dranesville through Great Falls to Langley. The road's earliest traces date to prehistoric times, worn by grazing herds circling the Great Falls of the Potomac, and Susquehannock and Iroquois traders later used the same path during the 17th-century fur trade. By the late 1700s, farmers hauled tobacco and other goods from the Piedmont and Shenandoah regions to Georgetown merchants along it, and in 1813 it became a toll road under a charter from the 13th Congress. Built with hand tools and horse-drawn equipment in the early 1800s, the pike stayed a private toll road until 1934, when Lucy Madeira Wing and Herman Gasch bought it for $500 and handed it over to the state, ending its tollbooth era for good. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it remains a rare stretch of two-lane rural road inside the DC metro area's dense northern Virginia suburbs.

• State Route 193
• Great Falls of the Potomac
• 1974 first Virginia byway
• 11.79 miles
• 1813 toll road charter
• National Register of Historic Places
• Susquehannock fur trade route