Biohazard Cleanup Near Beach Mill Downs Great Falls, VA

Great Falls is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, about 15 miles from Washington, D.C., named for the dramatic falls of the Potomac River along its northern edge.

The CDP's population was 15,953 at the 2020 census, up from 15,427 in 2010, according to U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts.

Census QuickFacts counted about 4,970 households in Great Falls in its 2020-2024 survey data, averaging 3.06 persons per household.

Great Falls Park, an 800-acre unit of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, preserves the place where the Potomac River plunges 76 feet in less than a mile over steep, jagged rocks through Mather Gorge.

George Washington chartered the Patowmack Company on May 17, 1785, to build skirting canals around the falls, and the ruins of the Patowmack Canal and of the canal town of Matildaville, chartered in 1790, are preserved inside the park.

The Patowmack Company eventually went bankrupt, and in 1828 its assets passed to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company.

Congress authorized preservation of the falls area in 1930 under the Capper-Cramton Act, and the National Park Service acquired Great Falls Park in 1966.

In the trolley era, the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad brought Washington excursionists out to the falls, reaching the park in 1909.

Other Fairfax County green spaces in and around Great Falls include Riverbend Park, Scott's Run Nature Preserve and the historic Colvin Run Mill.

Great Falls students attend Langley High School in McLean, established in 1965, whose attendance boundary extends west through Great Falls to the Loudoun County line; the National Center for Education Statistics counted 2,181 students there in 2024-25.