History
Ashburn was originally called Farmwell (variant names include Old Farmwell and Farmwell Station) after a nearby mansion of that name owned by George Lee III. The name “Farmwell” first appeared in George Lee’s October 1802 will and was used to describe the 1,236-acre (500 ha) plantation he inherited from his father, Thomas Ludwell Lee II. A section of Farmwell plantation west of Ashburn Road, a 580-acre (230 ha) tract, was purchased in 1841 as a summer home by John Janney, a Quaker lawyer who nearly became Vice President of the United States. Janney called the property Ashburn Farm; the name’s first known appearance in writing is 1870 when he sold the property. It is likely he named the farm after family friends whose name was “Ashburn”.
The Belmont Manor House and Janelia are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Geography
Ashburn is located at 39°02′37″N 077°29′15″W (39.0437192, −77.4874899) and its average elevation is 295 feet (90 m) above sea level.[1] According to the 2010 United States Census, the CDP has a total area of 17.287 square miles (44.77 km2), of which 17.025 square miles (44.09 km2) is land and 0.262 square miles (0.68 km2) is water. Ashburn is located between Washington Dulles International Airport and Leesburg, the county seat of Loudoun County.
Economy
Located within the Dulles Technology Corridor, Ashburn is home to many high-tech businesses. World Trade Center Dulles Airport is currently[when?] under construction and will be the second World Trade Center in the state.[17] Verizon Business has a major office in Ashburn at the location replacing MCI WorldCom’s headquarters after its acquisition. Ashburn is also home to government contractor Telos, and Amazon Web Services’s us-east-1 region of cloud computing resources. Loudoun County houses over 60 massive data centers, with many housing the cloud operations of Amazon Web Services (AWS).[22] Ashburn’s dozens of data centers are estimated to carry 70 percent of global web traffic.
The George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus are located in Ashburn. Redskins Park, the training camp for the Washington Redskins football team of the National Football League, is also located in Ashburn. The Wikimedia Foundation (parent of Wikipedia) has its primary data center in Ashburn.
EADS North America (the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company), renamed Airbus Group, Inc., a defense contractor headed by former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, has a second location in Ashburn in addition to the main office in Herndon, Virginia.
Ashburn Virginia 