Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9507030033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: GREAT FALLS LENGTH: Long
He has built his own mountain and imported dozens of zebras, gazelles, antelopes and other exotic animals to roam the range. So it seems only natural to Mack S. Crippen Jr. to add a modern-day castle to his western Fairfax County domain.
Crippen envisions a sprawling mountaintop estate, with a pool in the shape of Virginia, a two-story aviary and a minirailroad and waterfalls running from his front lawn to the 8-acre pond he has built below.
The complex would be powered from the methane that is rising from the rotting mountain, which happens to be a former dump.
``This is my dream, and I'm doing everything in my power to make it happen,'' said Crippen, 68, a college dropout who made millions as a landfill owner and housing developer. ``I hate to do things that don't make sense. But this does.''
To his Great Falls neighbors, it all sounds just a little loony. ``I'll bet you $1,000 against a doughnut that he will never live atop that,'' said Nevin Brown, 55, a retired government official who lives across from Crippen's 65-acre compound.
Brown and other residents are getting used to seeing Crippen feeding the kangaroos, camels, ostriches and long-horned African cows. But they're tired of eating his dust.
``Every day ... I am covered up with dust,'' Brown said of the soot that rises from trucks and bulldozers working Crippen's land. ``It is absolutely miserable.''
Crippen is showing no signs of backing down and is convinced his neighbors will appreciate his little corner of Eden once he's done.
Crippen, Jack to his friends, is known to many Fairfax residents as the guy who used to fly around the county in his helicopter, landing at the courthouse to pay a bill or at the old Lord & Taylor store in Falls Church so his wife could shop.
He's a blunt-talking descendant of a Confederate Army general who keeps a case of .22-caliber long-rifle bullets in the foyer of his home so he can shoot the mud turtles or foxes that mess with the birds in his pond.
Crippen has been slowed in recent years by spinal arthritis, but you can still find him out on a bulldozer, fixing up a place for his animals to sleep at night.
While building his private game preserve, he has been arrested and sued, and been the subject of several county and state orders. Fire officials got after him recently when they detected high levels of odorless but explosive methane gas rising from his rotting landfill.
Part of the trouble is Crippen's admitted impatience with red tape: He applied for county permission to own and breed the exotic animals only after he was hauled into court by Fairfax's animal warden.
``By golly, as long as you are not hurting anybody, anything is OK, in my mind,'' he said.
Crippen, who was born on a dairy farm in western Fairfax, has spent his life around animals, milking cows, auctioning cattle, hunting foxes, running steeplechases and, in the late 1970s, operating what is now the Reston Animal Farm. So when the state and local government ordered him to close his Great Falls landfill in 1988 after 15 years of operation, he decided to convert the lot into his own wild kingdom.
After some initial skittishness, the 200 or so animals seem to have gotten used to their new home.
Oscar the ostrich hangs out by the barn, poking around for feed. The Indian black buck and African oryx - two types of antelope - like to roam the landfill plateau. Prairie dogs are busy building a habitat beyond the barn. A family of aoudads, a spiral-horned African sheep, sits atop the rocks Crippen has laid out.
When he calls his pets in for dinner, a tin of Alpo just won't do.
``Come oooon. Come ooon babies. Come oooon home,'' Crippen yelled one recent evening in his slow drawl, as he maneuvered a feed-filled bulldozer to the spot where Oscar, Ernie the zebra and Drifter the African watusi cow assembled.
The county has prohibited Crippen from importing any lions, bears, leopards or other carnivores. He also can't open his wildlife habitat to the public, except for six visits a year by schoolchildren.
The landfill, made up of tree stumps and construction debris, began by accident.
``I was out there milking cows and a fellow came from Reston with a couple of tree stumps,'' Crippen said. ``I told him to put them back there in the gully. He came back the next day with another three loads and a fellow following him. The fellow offered me $10 per load and before the sun went down, I had $100 cash in my pocket. The bells went off and I was in the landfill business.''
Before the county got a court order to stop him from accepting junk, Crippen had a 500-foot-tall hill on his property, the second-highest spot in Fairfax, with views into Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Crippen now lives with his wife, Sandra, in a more conventional home near the wildlife refuge.
``He's a bulldog,'' said Randy Rouse, a longtime friend. ``And if he has to, he will fight until the day he dies to build that home.''
by CNB