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Home > Top > U.S. 15: Highway through history
The antebellum mansion, 260-acre grounds and gardens of Oatlands Plantation now belong to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Oatlands brings thousands of visitors to Leesburg every year, and hosts antiques shows, weddings, steeplechases and public events -- Times-Mirror Staff ...

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U.S. 15: Highway through history

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By Shannon Sollinger
Source: Loudoun Times-Mirror
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 2009
UPDATED WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 2009

Points in history:

• Point of Rocks Bridge, built in 1850, made the passage across the Potomac for traders and, a few years later, Union troops, much less perilous. The Newland's or Noland's Ferry kept getting passengers back and forth across the river until 1920

• The Lucketts School, now used as a community center and day care, was built in 1913. Public; call ahead.

• Morven Park, the 1,200-acre estate along U.S. 15 in Leesburg, has been home to two governors – Thomas Swann, of Maryland, in the 1800s, and Westmoreland Davis, Virginia, in the the early years of the 20th century. The Greek revival-style mansion was built in stages between 1750 and 1880. It is open to the public, along with the gardens and the carriage collection.

• Greenwood Farm at Ida lee Park in Leesburg is a pre-Civil War farmhouse. Open.

• The oldest section of the Old Court House in Leesburg dates to 1761. Additions date to 1811, 1895 and the first years of the 21st century. Slave auctions were conducted on the steps. Open.

• George Carter started construction of his Federal-style mansion at Oatlands Plantation in 1903. After the Civil War, many of Oatlands' former slaves established a community in nearby Gleedsville, and built the Gleedsville Church, now home of Loudoun's Unitarian Universalists. The estate was bought in the late 19th century by Stilson Hutchins, founder of The Washington Post, and in 1903 was sold to the Eustis family. The Eustis heirs donated Oatlands to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1964. Open.

• Oak Hill, still a private home, now looks across U.S. 15 to the greens and fairways of Creighton Farms. The fifth president, James Monroe, built the home in the 1820s, and lived at Oak Hill from 1825, after leaving office, until a year before his death in 1931. The Marquis de Lafayette visited there in 1825, and Monroe wrote at least the first draft of the Monroe Doctrine there. Private.

• The Mount Zion Old School Baptist Church in Aldie, built in 1851, served as barracks, battleground and burial ground during the Civil War. It has been deeded to Loudoun County and serves as the eastern gateway to the Mosby Heritage Area. Open.

Houses and shopping centers have for the most part replaced any vestige of the battles and farms of U.S. 15's past from Route 29 north through Prince William County. Loudoun County has thus far kept most of its 39 miles of U.S. 15 two-lane and somewhat rural. Farm stands, antiques shops, horse farms and hay fields still line the highway.

The past survives along the old Carolina Road in Loudoun County. Battlefields, presidential homes, farm houses, Reconstruction churches and antebellum estates beckon to visitors up and down the length of the highway.

“Growth is inevitable,” said Cate Magennis Wyatt, founder of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground. “But it does not have to devastate our heritage or our history.”

The Journey is working to harness the income potential of tourism to protect some of the past from development and suburbanization. A drive through history in Loudoun starts at the Point of Rocks bridge over the Potomac River from Maryland, and continues south to Oak Hill near Gilberts Corner and on to the Mount Zion Old School Baptist Church just east of U.S. 15 on U.S. 50.

“We work with the counties and towns through which the Journey passes,” Wyatt said. “We hope to bring alternative perspectives and/or solutions” as the jurisdictions rule on development and road improvements.

One approach, Wyatt said, is to develop a “parklike design standard” where the road must be widened – a divided highway with a raised, planted median. Prince William County adopted this approach to its widening of its 11.5 miles of the road.

The staff at the Journey is also working on a proposal for citizens from one end of the nation to the other to participate in a tree-planting campaign along U.S. 15 from Gettysburg to Monticello.

If it comes to pass, one tree will grow for each of the 650,000 soldiers who perished in the Civil War.



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Loudoun needs to get over itself. The whole "Hallowed Ground" thing is at best a huge waste of money when we don't have it to spend and at worst detrimental to our quality of life and ability to practice speedy commerce.

Why does Loudoun think it's history is any more important than that of Prince William or Frederick? Really. Keeping 15 a silly little windy and dangerous road connecting two future highways together is dumb plain and simple. Dumb.

And the "hallowed ground" bit couldn't be more hypocritical. No one thought it was hallowed ground when they paved it the first, second or third times did they? How about when the land got sold on either side to developers? Or when the government needed school sites.

Let us build a safer, wider road to more efficiently transport ourselves, goods and services through Loudoun County.

Quit with the super smug Loudoun attitude.

It's not hallowed ground. Worry less about yesterday and focus on today and tomorrow. Take a picture if you want to remember the way it was because you have a responsibility to your growing tax paying constituents to be a whole lot less (falsely) sentimental and a whole lot more practical.

The road is way overcrowded and inexcusably dangerous as it is today. That won't change, the population will grow no matter what, that's life. Keeping 15 a small road will and has caused several deaths. Make it wider with real shoulders. Richest county in the country, act like it.

Not another penny should go to "hallowed ground"

Posted by SomeGuy

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