Great article, Addison. Waterford is an exquisitely lovely little town "off the beaten path" of the burgeoning exurban DC sprawl. The preservation of beauty is a worthwhile trade-off for McMansion developments and a broader tax base (as seen in the highest-income strata VA town of Upperville). Waterford also has the advantage of not being a through-village like nearby Hillsboro, also a lovely little place.
Always looking for new places to visit! Maryland is interesting, really full of places like this too. (As a tourist or driving through on 95, "Maryland" was always basically synonymous with "Baltimore" and "DC suburbia." But it's much more interesting than that, even in the eastern half. Then there's the whole rural western half, which I've never been to at all.
Upperville is on U.S. 50 west of Middleburg, isn't it? The drive on 50 from Aldie/Chantilly to Winchester is one of my favorite.
You are correct: Upperville is on 50, east of Paris and west of Middleburg. It's where the famous Horse Show is held every June after Memorial Day, and where the Mellon family had Oak Spring Farm (they had an actual airport built on the estate approved by the FAA on condition the government could use it for fixed-wing access to nearby Mount Weather in a federal emergency). Queen Elizabeth actually came out to their Upperville estate on one of her visits, and the Mellon's had a home built specifically for Jackie Kennedy on their grounds for when she visited.
I agree, the U.S. 50 drive from Aldie east to Winchester is absolutely stunning. Upperville is just a cute gem in the middle of that drive.
You might enjoy driving through downtown Boonsboro, Maryland, and taking Route 34 out through Sharpsburg and over into Shepherdstown, WV, too. Lots of mixing of old and new when it comes to homes and historical preservation. Another interesting town to visit to examine how time and history and transportation modes (transfer from waterways and rail to car and highway) affected a place is Brunswick, MD, right over the Potomac from Lovettsville, VA. I'd be interested to read your thoughts on some of those places.
Always enjoyed your articles on New Urbs over at The American Conservative. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for such a thoughtful piece on my hometown. I have never met anyone from anywhere else with such deep connections as those of us who grew up in Waterford have; possibly because it was so small, and we all knew each other and could not really choose friends because there were not that many of us! And in a society where people report fewer connections to others, people who have lived in Waterford remain connected, through having lived in this tiny village, for a long time. I’m sure neighbors are as welcoming now as they were to my parents in 1969 when we moved there, too. It’s such an active and vital community, and a wonderful place to have kids or to be a kid.
Thank you! Some people leave small towns because they find the environment stifling, but many people also want more community. Towns like this are built in a way that makes it easier to form community. When you moved there, had the town already been restored or was it still undergoing that process? I may write about it again in more depth. I'm especially curious how exactly in functions today. Bedroom community, retirement, actual 'farmsteading'?
All of the above, really. There are a variety of people in town (although it - and the rest of Western Loudoun, and Western Albemarle, where I live now - are blindingly white); retirees, younger couples with children, people who keep weekend houses. The store you snapped a picture of is owned by our friend Linda, who raises sheep and uses their wool for knitting; she lets area kids take care of the sheep for their 4-H projects for our annual County Fair (and some of them also become delicious sausage). People have cows and chickens and various animals are usually in some form of flight from entrapment, which has been going on since the dawn of time: nothing unites neighbors like herding cows in the road. Our post office and gas station serve as de facto community centers for information and visiting. And the houses are in constant repair; the DOI does a regular exterior checkup on them and suggests maintenance, and in general it is easier to do preventative work than to fix something down the road - sort of like dentistry.
Enjoyed the article; appreciate the observation that perhaps it's okay if some places stay unchanged.
Suggestion for a place: Sandy Spring, in Montgomery County, about 25 min. north of the Beltway. Also a Quaker town, settled 1715. It's a striking contrast with Waterford, because it retains only a handful of publicly-visible historic structures, perhaps because of dispersed settlement patterns, but its traditional institutions remain strong. There's a newly expanded museum, which I'd estimate at 30–40,000 square feet (!), a Quaker meeting in an 1817 meetinghouse, a Friends school, nursing home, independent bank, and several Black churches.
Thank you for the beautiful images. I am no historian, but an avid cyclist. Waterford is a nice cycling destination from the W&OD. Speaking of which, I recall one day years ago and please indulge me here, I'm just sharing what I heard from a resident. The reason Waterford is so out of the way is because when the RR was being planned the citizens were pacifists and did not support the growing Virginia militia. Therefore the RR took a different route to keep the town from prospering from the trade the RR would eventually bring.
Great article, Addison. Waterford is an exquisitely lovely little town "off the beaten path" of the burgeoning exurban DC sprawl. The preservation of beauty is a worthwhile trade-off for McMansion developments and a broader tax base (as seen in the highest-income strata VA town of Upperville). Waterford also has the advantage of not being a through-village like nearby Hillsboro, also a lovely little place.
One example of a small town caught between a historical central main street and upper-income strata growth in the outlying environs is Libertytown, Maryland, which might be worth a trip for you to drive out there and examine. The old village has a busy artery (MD RT 26) that connects Frederick to Baltimore running through the main street. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/community_page_news/bulletin/libertytown-at-a-crossroads/article_2a4b81fd-c1a9-53cf-b6ca-7e947d43a03b.html
Always looking for new places to visit! Maryland is interesting, really full of places like this too. (As a tourist or driving through on 95, "Maryland" was always basically synonymous with "Baltimore" and "DC suburbia." But it's much more interesting than that, even in the eastern half. Then there's the whole rural western half, which I've never been to at all.
Upperville is on U.S. 50 west of Middleburg, isn't it? The drive on 50 from Aldie/Chantilly to Winchester is one of my favorite.
You are correct: Upperville is on 50, east of Paris and west of Middleburg. It's where the famous Horse Show is held every June after Memorial Day, and where the Mellon family had Oak Spring Farm (they had an actual airport built on the estate approved by the FAA on condition the government could use it for fixed-wing access to nearby Mount Weather in a federal emergency). Queen Elizabeth actually came out to their Upperville estate on one of her visits, and the Mellon's had a home built specifically for Jackie Kennedy on their grounds for when she visited.
http://www.virginialiving.com/culture/the-mellon-legacy/
I agree, the U.S. 50 drive from Aldie east to Winchester is absolutely stunning. Upperville is just a cute gem in the middle of that drive.
You might enjoy driving through downtown Boonsboro, Maryland, and taking Route 34 out through Sharpsburg and over into Shepherdstown, WV, too. Lots of mixing of old and new when it comes to homes and historical preservation. Another interesting town to visit to examine how time and history and transportation modes (transfer from waterways and rail to car and highway) affected a place is Brunswick, MD, right over the Potomac from Lovettsville, VA. I'd be interested to read your thoughts on some of those places.
Always enjoyed your articles on New Urbs over at The American Conservative. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! Brunswick/Lovettsville are already on my radar. The others I will get to at some point!
Thank you for such a thoughtful piece on my hometown. I have never met anyone from anywhere else with such deep connections as those of us who grew up in Waterford have; possibly because it was so small, and we all knew each other and could not really choose friends because there were not that many of us! And in a society where people report fewer connections to others, people who have lived in Waterford remain connected, through having lived in this tiny village, for a long time. I’m sure neighbors are as welcoming now as they were to my parents in 1969 when we moved there, too. It’s such an active and vital community, and a wonderful place to have kids or to be a kid.
Thank you! Some people leave small towns because they find the environment stifling, but many people also want more community. Towns like this are built in a way that makes it easier to form community. When you moved there, had the town already been restored or was it still undergoing that process? I may write about it again in more depth. I'm especially curious how exactly in functions today. Bedroom community, retirement, actual 'farmsteading'?
All of the above, really. There are a variety of people in town (although it - and the rest of Western Loudoun, and Western Albemarle, where I live now - are blindingly white); retirees, younger couples with children, people who keep weekend houses. The store you snapped a picture of is owned by our friend Linda, who raises sheep and uses their wool for knitting; she lets area kids take care of the sheep for their 4-H projects for our annual County Fair (and some of them also become delicious sausage). People have cows and chickens and various animals are usually in some form of flight from entrapment, which has been going on since the dawn of time: nothing unites neighbors like herding cows in the road. Our post office and gas station serve as de facto community centers for information and visiting. And the houses are in constant repair; the DOI does a regular exterior checkup on them and suggests maintenance, and in general it is easier to do preventative work than to fix something down the road - sort of like dentistry.
Great piece...many thanks..
Dude..what does "middle age" have to do with anything? Heh.
Nice article. One correction.... Waterford has more than one church.
Enjoyed the article; appreciate the observation that perhaps it's okay if some places stay unchanged.
Suggestion for a place: Sandy Spring, in Montgomery County, about 25 min. north of the Beltway. Also a Quaker town, settled 1715. It's a striking contrast with Waterford, because it retains only a handful of publicly-visible historic structures, perhaps because of dispersed settlement patterns, but its traditional institutions remain strong. There's a newly expanded museum, which I'd estimate at 30–40,000 square feet (!), a Quaker meeting in an 1817 meetinghouse, a Friends school, nursing home, independent bank, and several Black churches.
Thank you for the beautiful images. I am no historian, but an avid cyclist. Waterford is a nice cycling destination from the W&OD. Speaking of which, I recall one day years ago and please indulge me here, I'm just sharing what I heard from a resident. The reason Waterford is so out of the way is because when the RR was being planned the citizens were pacifists and did not support the growing Virginia militia. Therefore the RR took a different route to keep the town from prospering from the trade the RR would eventually bring.