The Nan Netherton Northern Virginia history collection contains Netherton's research and notes from her book "Reston: A New Town in the Old Dominion: A Pictorial History" (1989), as well as "Arlington County in Virginia : A Pictorial History" (1987) and "Fairfax County in Virginia : A Pictorial History," coauthored with Ross Netherton. Within the collection there are outlines for chapters, the copies of all the illustrations for the book, and the sources that Nan Netherton used during the writing process. The collection also contains oral histories, reports, brochures, photographs, executive budgets, and newsletters on historic sites in Northern Virginia.

Materials include brochures on the Woodlawn Plantation and Colvin Run Mill; comprehensive reports on plans for the Fairfax County Park Authority; audio tapes and transcripts of interviews with curators and historical preservationists, including an interview with former Gunston Hall curator Benny Brown and another with former Reston land developer Robert E. Simon, Jr.; newsclippings and an essay on Gunston Hall and a pamphlet calling for public opposition to the cutting of funding for Gunston Hall and the privatization of the Virginia Museum of Natural History; and eight boxes of images used in Netherton's pictorial histories of Fairfax and Arlington.

Series 1: This series is comprised of Nan Netherton's writings. The documents in this series are the outlines for her book in chapter format. There are ten chapters in order in the series. The books begins with the founding of Fairfax and ends with Reston, following the take over by the Gulf Oil Corporation in the late 1960s.

Series 2: This series contains the illustrations from Nan Netherton's book. Like the chapters, the illustrations are in order with pages numbers on the folders that correspond with the page numbers they would be placed in the book. Some of the illustrations are copies of documents from the 18th and 19th centuries. There are also slides and photographs from the 1960s and 1980s.

Series 3: This series is a general series of the sources that Nan Netherton used in her research. The series is organized in alphabetical order. The sources in this series are the more contemporary sources that deal primarily with Reston from the 1960s to the 1980s. Some of the sources include directories and maps from the Reston area.