Generally, these sites are viewable by simply driving by. In some instances, it might be advantageous to pull into a parking lot and stop to study a particular site in more depth.
Enjoy your tour and, above all, please be careful! We want you to live forever and stay with us in this quest to save our dark skies and our environment in general!
Should you have comments, suggestions, thoughts about additions or deletions, please send me an e-mail through the link provided later.
Ashburn Village Boulevard. This road meets Route 7 about 4.6-miles East of the Leesburg Route 15 Bypass and 2.7-miles West of Route 28. I would suggest driving along Ashburn Village Boulevard for a half-mile or so, noting the type of shielded housings used on the roadway lighting fixtures. If you do this when the atmosphere is really damp, foggy or misty, you can see the conical light pattern very well. I think this particular site is well worth a visit.
Leaving Ashburn Village Boulevard, proceed West along Route 7. Nearing Leesburg, and across from Lansdowne, on the South side of Route 7 a Company named Telos has what I would consider a nicely illuminated parking lot.
On the outskirts of Leesburg, there is a complex of automobile dealerships at Cardinal Park Drive that exhibit very high levels of overall light and glare. Some of the fixtures are aimed toward the highway and produce glare that could be hazardous, especially to drivers who might be having problems with cataracts.
Approaching Leesburg, on your right, note the tall, bright-white, glare-producing parking lot fixtures. This is the Leesburg Corner Outlet Mall - it can be seen for miles as one of the brightest spots in the area - maybe in the Universe.
Entering Leesburg, two gasoline stations have canopies over their fueling areas. The lights are not recessed into the canopies and produce high levels of glare, and are painfully visible over long distances.
Roy Rogers Restaurant. There is a tall, extremely bright lighting installation here that serves no purpose that I can fathom. I do not wish to single out Roy Rogers in particular, but would suggest that restaurants and other businesses that use excessively bright and generally troublesome light installations may feel that they are attracting customers and attention. In reality, they probably have quite the opposite effect.
Parking Lots at K-Mart (now closed) and Giant. It might be worthwhile to drive into one of these lots, park and compare the lighting fixtures. It seems to me that the ones in front of the prior K-Mart produce more glare than the units in front of Giant. Some of these lights are frequently on during daylight hours, wasting vast amounts of electrical energy and causing air pollution as a by-product.
Catoctin Circle. Turn onto Catoctin Circle from Route 7 or from the Giant parking lot and proceed South, and observe the lighting on the parking lot that I believe belongs to Leesburg Chrysler-Dodge more-or-less across from the Loudoun Funeral Chapel. You can drive onto this lot, stop and examine these lights at close range. I think they are far better than the norm.
More Catoctin Circle. Continue South to the Middleburg Bank on your right. This parking lot is also an example of better lighting practices. There is a light over the night-deposit box in the rear that is really mission-specific!
New Discovery on Catoctin Circle! Not far from the Bank, at the junction of Catoctin Circle and US Route 15 (South King Street) is a gasoline station named Quarles Q-Stop. This station has excellent lighting under their fueling canopy and on the lot outside the canopy area. It is the first gasoline station that I am aware of in our entire area that exhibited really good lighting practice, and it is well worth a visit. Thankfully, other fuel stations are improving, too.
Night photographs and a good story describing the Quarles Q-Stop in Leesburg and another very troublesome gasoline station in Middleburg are posted on the Web Site of Virginia Outdoor Lighting Taskforce. Use the following link to see this item, then use your 'Back' button to return here. [ www.volt.org ].
Leaving town, we visited an 'undisclosed location' on Thomas Mill Road and looked back toward the East. Here is the view we saw over Leesburg.
A Tour around Purcellville
One recent evening, Karin and I took a drive around the Purcellville area. Starting at the junction of Route 7 Bypass and Route 287, we drove West, noting just past the overpass bridge at Route 611 one or more extremely bright wall-mounted lights on what appears to be a warehouse or industrial center building.
It was raining on this occasion, and the rain drops on the windshield accentuated the glare, practically blinding me and being extremely distracting.
I am not bothered by any visual problems such as cataracts, nor was I wearing glasses, and must wonder how this scenario would have affected a driver with some visual challenges, possibly wearing smudged eye-glasses. I believe it would have serious safety implications.
Proceeding West, we turned off at Round Hill and headed back East on old Business Route 7 toward Purcellville, noting as we approached the edge of town several awfully bright lights on gateposts on our right and, a little further on, some highly intense ones at the Seven Eleven Food Store at Route 690.
We then turned Right on Route 690 and drove South for roughly 2.75-miles to Route 725, Paxson Road, turned Right and drove West along this road to Route 735, Black Oak Road, where we continued South along Black Oak Road for awhile, noting the various bright 'security lights' ruining the natural look and feel of what was once a beautiful, panoramic, landscape on your Left.
We visit this area often, and always feel that it could be especially pristine and dark, and full of country atmosphere if the lights that are now eroding the ambience of the area were only shielded and were not mounted on building sides and other reflective surfaces that exacerbate the glare and light trespass.
Then we retraced our route and returned to Purcellville, turning Right on old Route 7 and continuing further into town.
Remembering a more positive experience, we turned Left on Hatcher Street, and drove down to the US Post Office and noted the parking lot lights were fairly civilized, as were those on a parking lot that seemed to be associated with Blue Ridge Veterinary Associates.
Feeling a little better, we reversed course, back up to Route 7 and turned Left toward the traffic light at Maple Avenue, where we were assaulted by exceedingly bright and dangerously distracting lights from every direction! In particular, wall-mounted lights on the Seven Eleven Food Store, parking lot lights at the two shopping centers, terribly bright lights around McDonald's Restaurant and, finally, noting the Citgo and Amoco stations having lights that protrude below their fueling area canopies, intense enough to melt asphalt.
The Retreat Home
A retreat home through the country now in order, we proceeded North along Route 287 toward Lovettsville, passed Route 9 and were just beginning to recover from our experience when we approached Route 693 (Ash George Road).
Here is an equine facility that has two extremely bright 'security lights', one on a utility pole near the building and one about midway between the highway and the large building. These lights can be seen over long distances and, in my opinion, ruin the atmosphere over a very large area of beautiful countryside, as well as posing a possible safety hazard for passing motorists. If they were shielded to keep the light contained to the property, the whole area would be vastly improved.
Continuing our retreat along Ash George Road to our home, with all of this fresh in mind, I was able to 'wind down' and compose the above.
Thanks for taking the tour!
Please feel free to send me your thoughts and suggestions via E-mail to:
macdowell_r@mediasoft.net
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Robert K. MacDowell, Waterford, Virginia, 27 November 1999;
Updated 4 February 2001, 4 August 2003 and 19 September 2003.