A Brief History of Ashby’s Gap

By Travis Shaw, Director of Education, Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area

            For centuries, Ashby’s Gap has been a vital conduit for travel and trade between the Shenandoah Valley and the eastern piedmont. Archaeological evidence across the lower Valley suggests that early Paleoindian people inhabited the region more than 10,000 years ago. Gaps through the Blue Ridge allowed these nomadic people to follow the animals they relied on for food and resources as they migrated with the seasons. Centuries later, as the climate warmed and Native American groups began to live more sedentary lives, these gaps became integral to wide-ranging trade networks that stretched from the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River Valley and beyond. By the 17th century, groups including the Manahoac and Piscataway lived, traveled, hunted, and traded in the shadow of Ashby’s Gap.

In 1722, representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy met with several colonial governors to sign the Treaty of Albany, which ceded the land east of the Blue Ridge to European settlement. Within a few years of the Treaty, the area that is now Loudoun and Fauquier Counties was being carved up into land grants as part of the massive Northern Neck Propriety owned by the Fairfax family. Lord Thomas Fairfax patented over 122,000 acres along Ashby’s Gap and the Blue Ridge for himself in 1736, ensuring personal control over this crucial location. By the 1730s, colonists began arriving in the region, using the same paths that Native Americans had used for centuries. Among the earliest settlers in the region was Thomas Ashby, who settled along the eastern side of the gap that now bears his name.

In the decades preceding the American Revolution, Ashby’s Gap continued to draw settlers and traders moving west to the Shenandoah Valley. One of the most prominent names associated with the Gap during this period was a young George Washington. In his role as surveyor for Fairfax, Washington surveyed much of the Crooked Run Valley in the area of Paris. He also traveled through the area as an officer in the French and Indian War, directing Virginia militia through the Gap on their way to the battlefields on the western frontier.

Ashby’s Gap took on renewed importance during the American Revolution, as men and material crucial to the American war effort passed through the area. Prisoners of war were also marched through the gap on their way to prisons in the Shenandoah Valley. In November 1781 roughly 3,000 British, German, and American Loyalist prisoners captured at Yorktown made the slow climb over the Blue Ridge. As they passed by, one Scottish officer recalled taking a meal at the Ashby Tavern, once located in the village of Paris.

The decades following independence brought prosperity to the people of the northern Piedmont, and the Ashby’s Gap Road was integral to the growth of farms and mills. During the Jefferson administration the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike was chartered to improve the old colonial road and construct a number of bridges along its route. The turnpike became one of the most travelled routes between Alexandria and Winchester, carrying wheat, flour, and other produce to market. This prosperity, however, was inextricably tied to slavery, and the Gap became witness to untold misery. In one notable event in 1834, a coffle of dozens of enslaved men, women, and children were driven by traders from Alexandria across Ashby’s Gap and into the Valley.

During the Civil War, Ashby’s Gap’s strategic location ensured that it once again was witness to military campaigns. In July 1861 Confederate troops marched through the gap to Delaplane to board trains that would rush them to Manassas. This not only turned the tide of the battle but marked the first time in history that soldiers used railroads to reach the front. In the ensuing years Ashby’s Gap would be crossed by both northern and southern armies dozens of times, and several battles were fought along the slopes of the mountain there. In November 1862, June 1863, and July 1864 Confederate cavalry made desperate delaying actions at the gap to keep Union troops from entering the Valley. The gap also stood at the center of “Mosby’s Confederacy,” where southern guerilla leader John Mosby harassed Union movements during the latter half of the war.

Following the Civil War, the area around the gap experienced a different kind of invasion as wealthy northerners arrived in large numbers, drawn by the area’s equestrian culture and unspoiled landscapes. The landscape remained largely unchanged until the 1950s, when the route of the Ashby’s Gap Turnpike was altered to accommodate Route 50. Several historic bridges and the village of Paris were bypassed by the new highway, which allowed rapid connection to Washington, DC. Concerned with potential development along the Blue Ridge, philanthropist and equestrian Paul Mellon purchased 1,100 acres and donated it to the state as the core of Sky Meadows State Park. Today the park draws in thousands of visitors every year looking to enjoy the same vistas that people have looked out over for centuries.