Resolved: That we, Farmer's Club #4 ... favor petitioning the circuit judge of the county to order an election for the purpose of determining whether bonds shall be issued for the sum of $50,000 for the construction of a macadam road from Little River Turnpike at Chantilly to the Leesburg Pike at Dranesville, and as much more as possible.[184]

In some cases the clubs even worked together to build their own roads.[185] After ten years of pressure by farm groups, a bond issue was presented to the voters to pave the Leesburg Pike, the road from Chantilly to Herndon which ran through Floris, and a thoroughfare extending beyond Herndon to Mock Corner. The weight with which area residents viewed this issue is shown in a statement made by the Herndon Chamber of Commerce: "If this bond issue fails, it will be the greatest calamity that has befallen this community in many years." Happily the bond issue did pass and this, plus the statewide road program sponsored under the leadership of Governor Harry F. Byrd from 1926 to 1930, eliminated the bulk of the road problems. Only a few years later, in 1928, Fairfax was one of the foremost counties in Virginia in the area of transportation, with over 160 miles of surfaced roads.[186]

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Improved and unimproved roads in the Herndon area, c. 1930. Note that the only surfaced roads ran between Herndon and Centreville. Map surveyed by the Office of the County Engineer, Fairfax County. Copy courtesy of Library of Congress Map Division.

Stuck in the mud on one of the county's roads, c. 1911. Photo, Virginia Department of Highways and Transportation.

Surfaced roads were an obvious boon to marketing but they also had a number of unexpected positive effects. Conscientious and efficient as the farmers had tried to be, the county had worn a rather untidy appearance for several years. A traveler observed that "the fences are not as trigly mended or the buildings as trimly painted as in the [Shenandoah] Valley. A haystack is merely a pile of hay and not a neatly fashioned cock...."[187] County agent Derr also admitted that "in at least 75 percent of the farm homes there is little or no attention to the improvement of the home surroundings." The extension service worked valiantly to mitigate this problem by offering courses in landscaping and home maintenance, but to their surprise they found that the chief stimulus to home improvement was the repair of roads. Those areas which appeared most untidy were found on unimproved thoroughfares, which Derr maintained had a depressing effect on the farm family. "There is a direct correllation (sic)," he noted, "between the improvement of the roads and the painting and fixing up of things around the house."[188]