Steve Dryden grew up in McLean, Virginia and maintained a lifelong interest in the history and nature of the Washington, D.C. area. He is a preservation and environmental activist and writer. His affiliations include the Montgomery County Stormwater Partners Network Coalition, the Audubon Naturalist Society, Montgomery Countryside Alliance, FORCE, and the Friends of Peirce Mill.

Dryden reported for Business Week magazine earlier in his professional life. He also authored the books The Trade Warriors: USTR and the American Crusade for Free Trade (1995) and Peirce Mill: Two Hundred Years in the Nation's Capital (2009). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as a member of Fairfax Trails and Streams (FTAS), a McLean-based non-profit hiking group, Dryden researched the history of Pimmit Run for a map of the trail area. The “Pimmit Run: History and Ecology of a Northern Virginia Stream” map is illustrated in watercolor and annotated with historical and ecological information as well as points of interest along the trail.

Pimmit Run is an 8-mile long stream running from the edge of Arlington through Fairfax County, Virginia. The Pimmit Run Trail is a walking and mountain biking trail that follows the stream. The downstream trail starts in Arlington near Glebe Road and Chain Bridge, and it shares space with the Potomac Heritage Trail for the first mile. Most of the trail runs through residential areas and Fairfax County parkland. Even before the formal opening of the trail in 2007, Pimmit Run has long been a destination for hikers and naturalists.

The route marked on the “Pimmit Run: History and Ecology of a Northern Virginia Stream” map pre-dates the formal opening of the trail by the Fairfax County Park Authority. FTAS proposed this route so that a trail along Pimmit Run could join a network of interconnected off-road trails. The proposed trail also overlapped existing trails such as the Potomac Heritage Trail. The long-time goal among many in Fairfax County, including the Fairfax County Park Authority, FTAS, and the Potomac River Greenways Coalition, was to develop the Pimmit Run Trail so that it would tie in with a cross-county trail between Great Falls and Lorton and the 10-mile Potomac Heritage Trail along the Virginia shore between Theodore Roosevelt Island and the American Legion Bridge.

Part of FTAS’ advocacy efforts included Dryden researching the history and ecology of Pimmit Run. In 2004, FTAS successfully brought about the passing of a $65 million Fairfax County Park Authority bond which included funding for the Cross County Trail, missing links and stream crossings on the Pimmit Run Trail, and the acquisition of open space. In 2007, the Pimmit Run Trail opened downstream of Old Dominion to Brookhaven.