A small, quiet watch over 800 acres of public land in Lorton, Virginia — kept just in case.
Mustang Meadow sits inside the Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area — roughly 800 acres of open meadow, hardwood forest, ponds, and trails along the Mason Neck peninsula. It's BLM land, which means it belongs to all of us.
Hikers, mountain bikers, horseback riders, bird watchers, kids on field trips, neighbors who walk the Thompson Creek loop on Sundays — this is their meadow. The Mustang Trailhead pavilion has hosted wild horse and burro adoptions, springtime bird walks, winter solstice bonfires, Earth Day volunteer days, and family bonanzas. A quietly extraordinary piece of public land thirty minutes south of Washington.
In 2023, the U.S. Army advanced a legislative proposal to permanently transfer 50 acres of Meadowood out of public ownership. The intent was sympathetic. The Army's Caisson Platoon horses — the ones who escort fallen service members to their final rest at Arlington National Cemetery — had been kept in undersized lots, and several had died. They needed real pasture.
Caring for those horses matters. So does keeping public land public. Neighbors spoke up. The permanent transfer was set aside, and the Army has since said that Meadowood doesn't meet its immediate needs.
We registered this domain back then, in case the conversation came back.
Quiet, for now. The 2023 legislative proposal is dormant. A temporary right-of-way for limited horse pasturing technically remains on the books through December 2027, but no permanent transfer is being pursued, and public access to the trails, ponds, and meadows is unaffected.
The lights stay on here, in case that ever changes.