Source: Daily Press
On March 26, 2003 the Daily Press reported that "members of one of the world's oldest religions broke ground Wednesday for one of the newest places of worship in Virginia... The Zoroastrian Center and Darb-e-Mehr in Vienna, which will serve a growing community of Zoroastrians in the Washington area, will be the first temple ever built in Virginia to serve the religion that is more than 3,000 years old... The Washington area's Zoroastrian community is not the largest in the country, but it has been growing, due in large part to sectarian and political turmoil in the members' ancestral lands, notably Iran. Currently, membership amounts to some 500 families... There are no official numbers for Zoroastrians in the United States, but estimates range from about 5,000 to more than 15,000."