Platted in 1953 at the Dogue Creek confluence: three plats, 182 addresses, and a yacht club that lot ownership does not include.
Yacht Haven Estates sits where Dogue Creek meets the Potomac, and it is older than most of the Mount Vernon area's waterfront. The original plat was recorded on September 23, 1953 at Deed Book 1123, page 103 — worth stating plainly, because a 1957 date is repeated widely on listing and aggregator pages and it is wrong. Two later additions extended the community: Winelands in 1966 at Deed Book 2754, page 149, and Kress & Zimbros in 1967 at Deed Book 2905, page 334. Across the three plats there are 182 addresses on Neptune Drive, Tarpon Lane, Dolphin Lane, Coral Lane and Reef Court. Buyers and agents both shorten the name to "Yacht Haven," which is how it turns up in conversation and sometimes in the MLS.
The median lot is 0.53 acre — larger than Mount Vernon on the Potomac at 0.46, Riverwood at 0.39 or Wessynton at 0.37. Because the community came together across three plats spanning 1953 into the late 1960s, the housing is not one era or one elevation the way a single-builder subdivision would be, and street-to-street variation is normal rather than a sign of something wrong. Given the age of the original section, systems, roofs and the quality of past additions are where inspection money actually goes here.
The Mount Vernon Yacht Club at 4817 Tarpon Lane — 119 slips, a 25-meter pool and a clubhouse — sits inside the neighborhood, and this is the most misread fact about the place. It is a private club. Membership is applied for and paid for separately, and it does not travel with the deed to a lot in Yacht Haven Estates. A listing that implies pool or slip access is conveyed by ownership is describing something the club does not do. If membership matters to the decision, contact the club directly about current availability and terms before writing an offer.
Of 25 sampled addresses, 10 fall within 150 feet of a mapped Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Area and 12 within 300 feet of FEMA-mapped flood hazard — the highest exposure among the Mount Vernon subdivisions covered here. Two consequences follow. A dock or shoreline structure needs a Fairfax County-approved Water Quality Impact Assessment, and the county's 2024 amendments added coastal resilience provisions and RPA tree preservation requirements, so that review is more involved than it was a few years ago. And flood determination, elevation certificate and insurance quoting belong in diligence for any address near the water — pulled for the specific parcel, never for the subdivision as a whole. The community is on public sewer throughout.
Washington Mill Elementary School, Walt Whitman Middle School and Mount Vernon High School serve these addresses. Fairfax County Public Schools approved boundary changes in January 2026 taking effect for the 2026-27 school year, so verify the specific address in the FCPS boundary locator. As across the Mount Vernon area, the mail reads "Alexandria, VA" while the jurisdiction is unincorporated Fairfax County — county government, county schools and county permitting, not the city's.
Yacht Haven Estates sits within Mount Vernon — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
