Catoctin Valley

Virginia State Route 287, the Berlin Turnpike, is the major road through the valley, running north–south from the Potomac River to Virginia State Route 7. Virginia State Route 9 runs east–west across the very southern portion of the valley.

The valley was settled in the 1730s by German and Quaker immigrants who migrated south from southern Pennsylvania. They established small self-sufficient farms centered on small mill villages. They brought with them and employed few if any slaves. This region of Loudoun stood in stark contrast to the southern Loudoun Valley and areas east of the Catoctin Mountain, where plantation-style farming was established by English settlers moving north out of Tidewater Virginia. During the American Civil War, due to the people's reluctance to use slaves and their strong economic ties to Maryland, this area of Loudoun was strongly Unionist in sentiment. As a result, early in the war, fierce partisan fighting broke out between the area's Unionist soldiers, the Loudoun Rangers and the county's pro-Confederate soldiers, at The Fight at Waterford.

• Scheel, Eugene. Loudoun County Discovered:Communities Corners and Crossroads.
• Turner, Fitzhugh (ed.), Loudoun County and the Civil War. Loudoun County Civil War Centennial Commission, Leesburg, Va., 1961.