Potomac Yard is a neighborhood in Northern Virginia that straddles southeastern Arlington County and northeastern Alexandria, Virginia, located principally in the area between U.S. Route 1 and the Washington Metro Blue Line /Yellow Line tracks (or the George Washington Memorial Parkway, depending on the definition used). The area was home to (and takes its name from) what was once one of the busiest rail yards on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The "Potomac Yard" name is also used to refer to several developments in the area, especially the Potomac Yard Retail Center strip mall and a planned Washington Metro rail station. In 2018, Amazon.com, Inc. announced plans to locate part of its "HQ2" second headquarters project in Northern Virginia, specifically in the newly re-branded cross-jurisdictional neighborhood of National Landing, which local and state officials said would include Potomac Yard as well as nearby parts of southern Arlington, including the Crystal City neighborhood that will be the hub of the HQ2 development. Amazon initially planned to split HQ2 between National Landing and Long Island City, New York, but opposition from New York officials led Amazon to cancel that portion of the project, leaving National Landing as the only HQ2 site. Prior to Amazon's selection of National Landing, Virginia Tech had stated it would establish an "Innovation Campus" in the Alexandria portion of the neighborhood. History English settlers built several plantations on the site in the 18th century. The land, much owned by the Swann and Daingerfield families, became part of Alexandria County, D.C. with the creation of the District of Columbia in 1791, and retroceded to Virginia in 1846. Its role as a transportation hub began when Congress chartered the Alexandria Canal Company in 1830. The canal, which opened on December 2, 1843, would connect the port of Alexandria with the end of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (completed 1850) in Georgetown via the Potomac Aqueduct Bridge. It would operate until abandoned in 1886. Railroad development in the area began in the 1850s, though stymied by political concerns and by the American Civil War. The Alexandria and Washington Railroad began service on a new rail line between Long Bridge and Alexandria in 1857. Order to the region's mishmash of active and abandoned rail lines and stations did not come until the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century. The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C. (report of the McMillan