Finding the 9/11 Springfield Mall DMV Through the Internet Archive

Matthew Eng, Offbeat NOVA

Not unlike the history-shaping year we are currently having, 2001 altered the course of American history when the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001. I was just starting my senior year at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach, VA. I didn’t get my news and information from the Internet back then because I had my parents and the television. I was in school when the attacks occurred, so I didn’t see anything about it with my own eyes until that afternoon. After watching the planes crash into the World Trade Center a few times, I was done with it. I don’t think I processed it, but I was at least finished with learning more about it at the time.

The Internet looked much different in the early fall of 2001. The majority of Americans did not have broadband Internet. Most of us, like my family, used AOL and a dial-up modem to get online. I talked with imaginary friends in chat rooms. I left tacky away messages on Instant Messenger. I printed off driving directions from MapQuest. To be completely honest, I mostly used the Internet to get one thing: illegally downloaded music. Just kidding, of course.

News websites in 2001 look blocky and archaic by today’s standards, yet I still remember them well. In the process of thinking about a post to do for this week, I began thinking about any connections the 9/11 terrorist attacks had to Northern Virginia. As a relatively recent import into the area, I had no prior knowledge save from what I have gathered on the subject over the years. Truth be told, the facts surrounding the actual attacks are still an open wound for most of us. 

In a year where we are still hemorrhaging from emotional bleeding, I felt another angle was needed. In my research, I discovered an interesting connection between two of the terrorists that flew a plane into the Pentagon and the means in which they gained credentials to purchase a ticket for American Airlines Flight 77. It involved a DMV in a slowly-approaching dead mall about ten minutes from where I live now. This is the story of how I found that DMV Express location today, using the modern Internet to recall the halcyon days of the digital age. 

Let me tell you a quick story. 

On August 1, 2001, Saudi Arabian nationals Hani Hanjour and Khalid al-Mihdhar traveled to Falls Church, VA, to a 7-Eleven off Leesburg Pike to obtain fraudulent documentation. One of the employees there, Luis Martinez-Flores, was willing to openly expose a very broad loophole in the process for obtaining Virginia identification for a price of $100. The three men proceeded to the DMV Express in the lower level of Springfield Mall. Hanjour and al-Mihdhar used a false address provided by Flores, 5913 Leesburg Pike, just a short drive from the 7-Eleven where Flores worked. The address, once verified and falsely signed by Flores as truth, provided the necessary criteria for Hanjour and al-Mihdhar to claim themselves as  legal residents in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They received their identity cards that day. 

IDs in hand, both were able to purchase tickets on American Airlines Flight 77, which departed from Dulles International Airport for Los Angeles, California, at 8:10 am on September 11, 2001. These two men, along with three other Saudi Arabian nationals, hijacked the flight, crashing it into the western side of the Pentagon an hour and twenty minutes later at 9:37 am. Fifty-eight passengers lost their lives. An additional 125 fatalities occurred on the ground at the Pentagon. 

I want to focus less on the horrific tragedy of the day and instead explore what occurred a few miles down the road from where I now live. Where were those places? Specifically, what happened to the DMV Express? We have been going to the newly renovated Springfield Town Center since it reopened in 2014, and have never seen a DMV in the mall. Like the majority of the structure itself, it seemed that the DMV Express was swallowed in the mall’s closure in 2012 before cocooning itself in a two-year construction phase. What emerged, Springfield Town Center, looked nothing like its shabby predecessor. The DMV Express was gone, alongside most of the previous stores in it. The posh space has now shed all its drab architectural insecurities for clean lines and a bland color scheme that would make most asylums blush. 

How could I recall the past and pinpoint exactly where the DMV Express was located? I can go to the same place I go for the answers to all my problems….the Internet! But where to start?

A quick Google search on “DMV Express, Springfield VA” leads you to the DMV Select, located caddy-corner to Springfield Town Center Today. No information on the former DMV Express exists in the search results, even on the first four pages. In fact, it looks like there are no locations named “DMV Express” in the state of Virginia. 

I had to unpeel another layer of the Internet. I wasn’t ready to go to the core just yet. If possible, I hoped to avoid places like Reddit and 4chan, the figurative center of Dante’s Internet inferno where simps sit frozen in ice suffering next to unabashed “Karens,” anti-vaxxers, and people who chew too loudly. 

The next step was video. Thankfully, I found something. I typed in “Springfield Mall 1990s” into the search bar. The first hit was from a user by the name of “SignalsOverTheAir” who reminisces about the original Springfield Mall before it closed in 2012. Sure enough, the very first thing he mentions is the DMV Express. I can finally see what it looks like. But the shop as it existed in 2012 was closed up, so I had no bearings to go on. I had to go further.  

My next step was to look it up on a website I have used before for looking up businesses, dobsearch.com. Upon searching, I was able to find the business inside the mall. But the address it gave was not specific to any shop. The telephone number was old and dead. Another dead end. 

Through the number, however, I was able to find an old PDF document from the DMV that listed different customer service centers around the country. It had a slightly different address for the one in Springfield. 

6691-A Springfield Mall
Springfield, VA 22150

Unfortunately, when you type in that address into Google, it takes you to a Taco Bamba Taqueria down the road. As delicious as those tacos are, it did not quench my curious appetite for answers. Then it hit me. If I wanted to find the old Internet, I had to go to the one place that stores it for safe keeping, the Internet Archive! 

The problem was I couldn’t use on a search team like today. I had to have a website in mind. What would it be? I put in the stupidest and simplest answer I could think of: www.springfieldmall.com. Bingo. 

Apparently the mall slogan back in 2002 was “Turn up the fun.” No wonder they wanted to gut the place and start over. Looking at the menu on the right, I chose the “Service and Financial” hyperlink, which gave me an old school list of relevant businesses. Seven businesses down from some place called “Back Rubs USA” was the DMV Express. I finally found it! It had a different 1-800 number and everything! The best part was, the directory finally showed it’s location, on Lower Level A section. Thankfully when I clicked it, it took me to a c. 2002 map of the mall. Looking at the map, I was able to decipher exactly where it was, and what happened to the location of arguably one of the most famous DMV locations in American history. 

The former DMV Express was located just outside the lower level of the Target store underneath the escalators. Today, the location is currently a beauty spa and salon called Eyebrow Designer 21. In the few times I would peak out to get footage for this video after making a Target run, the place always seemed busy. It looks like a nice establishment. Good Yelp reviews. I wonder if they know what happened there nearly twenty years ago. 

I am thankful that modern technology allowed me to reach back two decades into the past to find what I was looking for. In a year when everything is crushing us down, rehashing the sordid details of 9/11 seemed too much for me. Using the Internet for an offbeat scavenger hunt, however, is another story.