A history of Tysons,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Tysons from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Known originally as Peach Grove, the area received the designation "Tysons Crossroads" after the Civil War. William Tyson, a Maryland native from Cecil County, purchased a tract of land from A. Lawrence Foster. Tyson served as postmaster of the now discontinued Peach Grove Post Office from 1854 to 1866.
As recently as the 1950s, Tysons was a quiet rural intersection flanked by a few small stores and a fruit stand operated by the Tyson descendants, who sold apples and apple cider from the corner of their property. In 1963, the Tysons area moved from a country crossroads to a giant commercial urban area with the awarding of contracts at the interchange of VA Route 7 and VA Route 123.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Tysons’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewTysons Corner Center Mall, 1980: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Tysons, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Tysons Corner Center Mall (1980) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom the Library of Congress (5). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.