Dear Newcomers:
More than 100 years before Sterling Park was placed on the drawing boards for the ravenous developers, the Broyhills or United States Steel, Old Sterling included its own railroad station, Guilford Station, and served as the commercial center for area farmers. Folks living in Old Sterling in the 1920s and 1930s remember it as a close-knit community with an intimate population of give or take 200 people.
Education back then ended for many children from farm families after they graduated from the eighth grade in the two-room schoolhouse on Ruritan Circle off Church Street. The schoolhouse was built in 1879 and operated continuously until 1947. Those who chose to matriculate to high school had to travel to Ashburn, the next stop west on the railroad line. The W&OD Railroad tracks, bisecting the village, were lined on the north by a row of comfortable houses and businesses and on the south by the railroad depot, a mill and a Southern States store on what was then named Railroad Avenue, now called Ruritan Road. A mercantile store lay just south of Railroad Avenue that later became a meat market and then more recently, a lawn mower repair shop.
At one point in its history Sterling had a total of five bars, a blacksmith shop, a saddle shop, grocery store and a combination shoe store-bar and post office. The street that crossed the railroad tracks was anchored at one end by the Guilford Church built in 1857 and on the other end by the Methodist Church built in approximately 1875.
The Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad originally designated Sterling as Guilford Station when the station was established in 1860. In 1872, it was renamed Loudoun due to the fact that it was the first stop over the county line. J. P. Morgan purchased the line in 1887, which was eventually to become the Washington and Old Dominion, and changed the name one last time from Loudoun to Sterling. Some, say he, chose the name Sterling because of his large banking interests but no one knows for certain.
As time passed and the number of farm families began to decrease, residents began to move over to the new homes in Sterling Park and Old Sterling continued its transition from farming and commercial center to gradual ghost town. Several factors led to its demise in the early 1960s. The downhill slide started in 1965 when a modern office facility was built next to the Sterling Park Mall. The railroad only continued to remain in business in order to transport cement for the construction of runways at Dulles Airport, which was mostly completed by 1963. The Sterling Park Mall opened and was soon followed by more new shopping centers at Route 7 and Dranesville Road. The Old Sterling community with buildings near 100 years old were abandoned or torn down. The historic old village was left to time by its new neighbors to the east.
I strongly urge anyone who is interested in pursuing Sterling's past to take a drive down Church Street to Ruritan Circle and visit the Guilford Church and other historic buildings near the bike path that once was the railway that first brought prosperity to the place we now call Sterling.