Nearby

Many of those attracted to Clifton these days are younger couples with children, eager to preserve Clifton’s heritage and grateful for its sense of place. Chesley’s next-door neighbor and owner of the Clifton Café, Erin Tengesdahl, is one of those people. She tells a story that’s quite familiar to town residents. Tengesdahl grew up in Clifton and came back with her husband, Steffen, and children in 2008, attracted by the close-knit community and the highly rated Clifton Elementary School. “We tried to duplicate the sense of community elsewhere, and it just doesn’t work,” she says. Chesley says that he likes what he sees in the new residents. “These new young people remind me of 30 years ago—they came here for a reason.”

Even this idyllic place and its dedicated residents are not immune to the rapid-fire changes in northern Virginia. For example, there has been talk that the local elementary school might be closed and integrated with another school nearby, and developers will surely persist in their efforts to build. Nothing lasts forever, but don’t say that in Clifton, where , as writer Lee Ruck put it in the second edition of Netherton’s book, “Early morning mists still drape the flood plain; where deer can be seen grazing; where muskrats and an infrequent river otter still play in Popes Head Creek and its tiny tributaries …”; and where “spring Saturdays are still spent painting picket fences and joining neighbors in planting flower barrels.”

To be sure, that’s a very sentimental view of Clifton—and yet, perhaps, not far off the mark.