The Lure of Loudoun: Centuries of Change in Virginia's Emerald County

About this book

Much more than a local history The Lure of Loudoun: Centuries of Change in Virginias Emerald County is a compelling diary in pictures and text of one of the nations fastest growing counties. The Lure of Loudoun foretells a prospect facing any rural landscape that is within range of a growing urban centera tale that will strike the reader as both familiar and prophetic. This history begins with the geologic factors that created the region. It examines the early Native American societies here before the Europeans. It then traces Loudoun Countys history through the rapid and radical changes wrought by European settlement colonial and civil warfare agrarian development and into the explosive suburban growth of recent decades. Loudouns early-nineteenth-century inhabitants were German English and Scots-lrish farmers as well as the enslaved African Americans who made up a quarter of the population. lts rich soils ample water supplies and ready labor force made Loudoun an early leader in Virginias farming economy. As the Civil War loomed Loudouns residents were deeply divided about slavery and secession and significant numbers voted to remain in the Union prior to the firing on Fort Sumter. Loudoun also led in the (eventually unsuccessful) efforts to re-colonize freed slaves in Africa. The countys ambivalence toward slavery and secession was reflected in the formation of both Union and Confederate regiments once war broke out. Recovering quickly from the wars devastation Loudoun was again leading Virginia in agricultural production by 1870. By the early 19005 Loudoun was well known for dairy farming. But where there were once three hundred dairy farms there is now only one-the result of the dramatic suburbanization visited on Loudoun in the postWorld War ll era. In the early 1950s the construction of Dulles international Airport ... -Well-indexed with a large 8.5" x 11" format