Mount Murtaugh

Yay! I found mount trashmore in Fairfax! On accident of course, I was looking for the recycling center. The mt. trashmore in Virginia Beach was a lot more inviting than this place.

The best thing here is the free compost and mulch. In past years the mulch has been full of bits of trash but it seems pretty clean this year. They also have an automatic machine that dumps the mulch in to your truck for you. Not bad for FREE!!!

Mount Murtaugh — the highest point in Fairfax County — at 556.9 feet above sea level.
What is this mountain? What are it’s geologic origins? Is it the result of two continental plates colliding? Is it similar to the fold and thrust faulting we see throughout the physiographic ridge and valley province of the Appalachians?
No.
Mount Murtaugh is a feat (if you can call it that) of human waste management engineering. It is the closed landfill site in Fairfax County — just off of West Ox Road. While the landfill has been closed since 1982, the County still operates the I-​66 Recycling and Disposal Center at this location.
Mount Murtaugh is named after and in honor of — County Engineer, Hugh Murtaugh, who worked diligently to site, develop and monitor the facility from concept to closure (lifted from the Fairfax County web site).
The site has an athletic field built atop it — and methane and other gases generated by the site are captured and used to heat nearby maintenance facilities.
When we were in high school — we used to sneak up onto Mount Murtaugh in our Four Wheel Drive vehicles — folks were not supposed to go up onto the mountain — but that just made it more interesting for teenagers.
How does one rate a mountain created by the burial of trash? I decided to use the criteria of what I thought of the mountain at the time — that somehow it was mysterious and off-​limits — as a teenager — that merits five stars.
You can see Mount Murtaugh as you drive down Interstate 66 (I-​66) in between Centreville and Fairfax.
EDIT: If I were to evaluate/​rate Mount Murtaugh in the modern day — meaning what I know now — my criteria would revolve around the environmental effects of the facility.