Loudoun County Road Orders 1783-1800

About the report:

The road history projects undertaken by the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research (formerly the Virginia Transportation Research Council) establish the feasibility of studies of early road networks and their use in the environmental review process. These projects, by gathering and publishing the early road orders of the vast parent counties and other significant areas, also lay the foundation for additional research by local groups over a broad area of Virginia.

This volume marks the twenty-ninth entry in the Historic Roads of Virginia series, initiated in 1973 by the Virginia Highway & Transportation Research Council (subsequently the Virginia Transportation Research Council, and now the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research). Loudoun County Road Orders 1783-1800 is a cooperative effort of the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research and independent researcher Patricia B. Duncan. This volume furthers the coverage of early northern Virginia transportation records begun in the previously published Loudoun County Road Orders 1757-1783, Fairfax County Road Orders 1749-1800, Frederick County Road Orders 1743-1772, and Orange County Road Orders 1734-1749.

This volume covers the period from the years immediately following the end of the Revolutionary War through the end of the 18th century. By the last half of the 18th century, Loudoun County was already one of the most populous and economically important counties in northern Virginia, and it contained major east-west and north-south transportation routes. The county’s early transportation records provide important information relating to transportation connections with not only neighboring counties and other southern counties in Virginia but also with the Washington, D.C., region and the adjoining states of Maryland and what is now West Virginia. This publication will have particular application to the cultural resource research relating to transportation projects in this area of northern Virginia. This information will eliminate the need for further research into the early Loudoun County road order records. If questions arise about early roads once a VDOT road improvement project is already underway (or nearly underway), primary historical research of this nature can take 6 to 12 months to complete. Therefore, this volume can be a source of potentially significant cost savings for VDOT, including the avoided costs of project delays and avoided consultant costs for cultural resource studies should questions arise.

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