Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern NeckWilliams, Harrison
History
Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern Neck
Williams, Harrison
Historic buildings -- Virginia -- Loudoun County; Loudoun County (Va.) -- History
The Carolina Road entered Virginia at a point on the bank of the
Potomac, above the mouth of Maryland's Monocacy, where Noland's Ferry
sometime prior to 1756 became its connecting link with Maryland; thence
it ran in a southeasterly direction somewhere along the present clay
road to Christ Church just south of modern Lucketts; thence south,
following closely the present Leesburg-Point of Rocks State Highway,
through Leesburg over what is known as King Street (the King's Highway
of yesteryear) and approximately along the present James Monroe Highway
(Route 15 of the United States Highway System) to Verts' Corner, thence
along what is still locally called the Carolina Road (or sometimes the
Gleedsville Road) to Goose Creek at Oatlands. The present hard road from
Verts' Corner to Oatlands, now the main road, was probably built and the
old road's traffic at that point diverted about 1830 when the rough
pavement of the road was undertaken. From Goose Creek at Oatlands the
old road followed United States Route 15 as at present to the Little
River Turnpike, now known as the Lee-Jackson National Highway, just east
of the village of Aldie; crossing this, it followed what is now but a
local and little used county road which, in its progress south of the
county and under changing conditions, eventually crosses the other great
rivers above their falls line and so on to North Carolina. Along its
route the first church in Loudoun, Aubrey's little log "Chapel of Ease,"
was erected at the Big Spring; and later many of the mansions of the
Loudoun gentlefolk, such as the Noland House, Rockland, Springwood,
Selma, Raspberry Plain, Morven, Rokeby, Oatlands, Oak Hill, and others
in due time came to be built and historic "Ordinaries" or taverns such
as that known as West's and later as Lacey's and towns such as Leesburg
and the nearby Aldie grew up. All through the eighteenth century the
flow of its colorful traffic continued and developed in volume until the
founding of the City of Washington, as the nation's Capital, drew to the
east those travelling between the northern and southern States. And now,
over a hundred years after the passing of its golden days of activity,
there are rumoured plans to revive the old road as a main north and
south highway and once again, in the not too distant future, we may see
its old life restored, with motors and trucks speeding along its surface
where the old-time foot and horse-travel and Indians and soldiers,
missionaries and traders, drovers honest or otherwise, were wont slowly
to pass.
Nor are the old mansions and towns the only surviving landmarks along
its way. The famous Big Spring still rises in as steady volume as of
yore; the Tuscarora and Goose Creeks, no longer needfully forded but now
spanned by modern concrete bridges, still flow complacently in their
old-time channels and between them, on the west side of the present road
and two and a half miles south of Leesburg, still stand the old Indian
mounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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