Cameron Run Watershed

The Cameron Run Watershed (CRW) is a highly urbanized, 44 square-mile watershed located in Northern Virginia. "The region is completely urbanized with nearly 95 percent of the watershed developed with mixed residential and commercial use". Seventy-five percent of the watershed lies in Fairfax County, and the rest lies in Arlington County and the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria. In addition to several streams (called “runs”), there are two lakes—Lake Barcroft (137 acres) and Fairview Lake (15 acres)—and four ponds. There are eight sub-watersheds within the CRW. The western part of the CRW lies within the Piedmont; the southeastern part in the Coastal Plain.

Holmes Run is the primary headwater stream of the CRW. In addition to Holmes Run, the other tributaries to the CRW are: Tripps Run, Backlick Run, Indian Run, and Pike Branch, which all join Cameron Run. Hunting Creek joins Cameron Run right before emptying into the Potomac River. The tributaries map as follows: From the northwest come the Upper Holmes and Tripps Runs via Lake Barcroft (the two runs become the Lower Holmes Run after the pass-through dam on Lake Barcroft); and from the west, Turkeycock Run and Indian Run converge with Backlick Run. In the lower center of the watershed: Backlick and Lower Holmes Run and Pike Branch (flanking in from the south) converge with Cameron Run from the northeast.

The CRW was heavily forested until the mid-1600s. A large beaver population created wetlands amid numerous ponds that provided habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna.Native Americans, and more specifically members of the Dogue tribe were the first human inhabitants of the area. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when they arrived—probably around 1250 A.D.--several centuries before the Europeans, trapping, fishing, and clearing land for farming. The first changes to the watershed came when Europeans wiped out the beaver population for their pelts, which led to deterioration of their dams and “changed the hydrology and ecosystem of the stream valley”. In the mid/late 1600s to the early 1700s, Europeans concentrated on farming tobacco, which greatly impacted soil fertility and erosion. In the 1720s, from New York brought new farming practices (fallowing land; bringing new/different seed stock; rotating crops; planting clover to enrich soil; using lime and animal waste as fertilizer; using deeper plowing practices)

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