Northern Virginia
Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The region radiates westward and southward from Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, and has a population of 3,257,133 people as of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, representing over a third of the state's total population. It is the most populous region in both Virginia and the regional Washington metropolitan area.
Communities in the region form the Virginia portion of the Washington metropolitan area and the larger Washington–Baltimore metropolitan area. Northern Virginia has a significantly larger job base than either Washington, D.C. or the Maryland portion of its suburbs, and is the highest-income region of Virginia, with several of the highest-income counties in the nation, including three of the ten highest counties for median household income, according to the 2019 American Community Survey.
Northern Virginia's transportation infrastructure includes two major airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National and Dulles International Airport, several lines of the Washington Metro subway system, the Virginia Railway Express suburban commuter rail system, transit bus services, bicycle sharing and bicycle lanes and trails, and an extensive network of Interstate highways and expressways.
The Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense and the world's second-largest office, is located in Arlington County in Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia also houses the George Bush Center for Intelligence, the headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, and several large companies, including several major aerospace manufacturing, consulting firms, and defense industry, which serve it and other components of the U.S. federal government.
Tourist attractions in Northern Virginia include various memorials, museums, and Colonial and Civil War–era sites, including Arlington National Cemetery, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, Manassas National Battlefield Park, Mount Vernon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the National Museum of the United States Army, the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, and the United States Marine Corps War Memorial. Other attractions include portions of the Appalachian Trail, Great Falls Park, Old Town Alexandria, Prince William Forest Park, and portions of Shenandoah National Park.
Etymology
The region is sometimes spelled "northern Virginia", but the U.S. Geological Survey's Correspondence Handbook states that the 'n' in Northern Virginia should be capitalized since it is a place name rather than a direction or general area.The name "Northern Virginia" does not seem to have been used in the early history of the area. According to Johnston, some early documents and land grants refer to the "Northern Neck of Virginia", a reference to the Northern Neck and describing an area that began at the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and includes a territory that extended west, including all the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, with a western boundary called the Fairfax line.
The Fairfax line, surveyed in 1746, ran from the first spring of the Potomac River, which remains marked today by the Fairfax Stone, to the first spring of the Rappahannock River, at the head of the Conway River. The Northern Neck was composed of, and was larger in area than five of the modern U.S. states.
The inscription on the stone, erected on October 23, 1746, reads:
Early development of the northern portion of Virginia was in the easternmost area of that early land grant, which encompasses the modern counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, and Westmoreland. At some point, these eastern counties came to be called separately simply "the Northern Neck", and, for the remaining area west of them, the term was no longer used. By some definitions, King George County is also included in the Northern Neck, which is now considered a separate region from Northern Virginia.
One of the most prominent early mentions of "Northern Virginia" as a title was the naming of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War.
Definition
The most common definition of Northern Virginia includes the independent cities and counties on the Virginia side of the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget within the Executive Office of the President of the United States.Northern Virginia includes six counties, Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Spotsylvania and Stafford counties, and six independent cities, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Fredericksburg, Manassas, and Manassas Park.
History
Colonial period
The Colony of Virginia was settled at Jamestown in 1607. The area now generally regarded as "Northern Virginia" was within a larger area defined by a land grant from King Charles II of England on September 18, 1649, while the monarch was in exile in France during the English Civil War. Eight of his loyal supporters were named, among them Thomas Culpeper.On February 25, 1673, a new charter was given to Thomas Lord Culpeper and Henry Earl of Arlington. Lord Culpeper was named the Royal Governor of Virginia from 1677 to 1683. Culpeper County was later named for him when it was formed in 1749; however, history does not seem to record him as one of the better of Virginia's colonial governors. Although he became governor of Virginia in July 1677, he did not come to Virginia until 1679, and even then seemed more interested in maintaining his land in the "Northern Neck of Virginia" than governing. He soon returned to England.
In 1682, rioting in the colony forced Culpeper to return. By the time he arrived, however, the riots were already quelled. After apparently misappropriating £9,500 from the treasury of the colony, he returned to England and the King was forced to dismiss him. During this tumultuous time, Culpeper's erratic behavior meant that he had to rely increasingly on his cousin and Virginia agent, Col. Nicholas Spencer. Spencer succeeded Culpeper as acting Governor following Culpeper's departure. Culpeper's descendants allowed Robert "King" Carter and other Virginians to manage the properties.
In 1736, legal claim to the land was finally established by Culpeper's grandson, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who became known in the colony as "Lord Fairfax", following a survey authorized by Governor William Gooch. The lands of Lord Fairfax and Northern Virginia were geographically defined as the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, and were officially called the "Northern Neck". In 1746, a back line was surveyed and established between the headwaters of the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, defining the west end of the grants. According to documents held by the Handley Regional Library of the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society, the grant of included 22 modern counties, including Northumberland, Lancaster, Westmoreland, Stafford, King George, Prince William, Fairfax, Loudoun, Fauquier, Rappahannock, Culpeper, Madison, Clarke, Warren, Page, Shenandoah, and Frederick counties in Virginia, and Hardy, Hampshire, Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson counties in West Virginia.
Lord Fairfax was a lifelong bachelor, and became one of the more well-known persons of the late colonial era. In 1742, the new county formed from Prince William County was named Fairfax County in his honor, one of several locations in Northern Virginia and West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle named after him. Lord Fairfax established his residence at his brother's home at "Belvoir" on the grounds of present-day Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County. He later built a hunting lodge named "Greenway Court", which was located near White Post in Clarke County near the Blue Ridge Mountains, and moved there. Around 1748, he met George Washington, who was then 16-years-old. Impressed with Washington's energy and talents, he employed him to survey his lands west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Lord Fairfax maintained neutrality as the American Revolutionary War began in 1775. Just a few weeks after the surrender of British Army troops under General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Fairfax died at his home at Greenway Court on December 9, 1781, at the age of 90. He was entombed on the east side of Christ Church in Winchester. While his plans for a large house at Greenway Court never materialized, and his stone lodge is now gone, a small limestone structure he built remains on the site in his honor.
Statehood and Civil War
Following the American Revolutionary War, the Thirteen Colonies formed the United States of America, and Continental Army commander and Virginian George Washington became the new nation's first president. Prior to the Revolutionary War, Washington was a surveyor and developer of canals that were used for transportation. He was also a proponent of the bustling port city of Alexandria, located on the Potomac River below the fall line, not far from his plantation at Mount Vernon in Fairfax County.During much of the colonial era and from 1790 to 1800, the nation's capital was in Philadelphia. In 1800, however, with Washington's guidance and support, the new federal city of present-day Washington, D.C. was laid out and established for the purpose of serving as the national capital. The region straddled the Potomac River and was located on a square of territory ceded to the federal government by Maryland and Virginia. Alexandria, a port city at the time, was on the eastern edge south of the river. On the outskirts on the northern side of the river, was Georgetown, another port city.
As the federal city grew, land in the portion contributed by Maryland proved best suited and adequate for early development. Not really part of the functioning federal city, citizens in Alexandria, who lacked voting input, were frustrated by the laws of the District's government. Slavery also arose as a contentious issue. In 1846, to mitigate these issues and as part of abolishing slave trading in the District, the U.S. Congress passed a bill retroceding to Virginia the area south of the Potomac River, which was then Alexandria County. That area now forms all of present-day Arlington County, which was renamed from Alexandria County in 1922, and a portion of the independent city of Alexandria.
Slavery, states' rights, and economic issues increasingly divided the northern and southern states during the first half of the 19th century, eventually leading to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Although Maryland was a slave state, it remained with the Union, while Virginia seceded and joined the newly formed Confederate States of America, whose capital was established at Richmond.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never issued a firm opinion on whether the retrocession of the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia was constitutional. In the 1875 case of Phillips v. Payne, the Supreme Court held that Virginia had de facto jurisdiction over the area returned by Congress in 1847, and dismissed the tax case brought by the plaintiff. The court, however, did not rule on the core constitutional matter of the retrocession. Writing the majority opinion, Justice Noah Swayne stated only that:
The plaintiff in error is estopped from raising the point which he seeks to have decided. He cannot, under the circumstances, vicariously raise a question, nor force upon the parties to the compact an issue which neither of them desires to make.
With barely separating the two capital cities, Northern Virginia found itself in the center of much of the conflict, which inflicted destruction and bloodshed. The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary army for the Confederate States of America in the east. Owing to the region's proximity to Washington, D.C., and the Potomac River, the armies of both sides frequently occupied and traversed Northern Virginia. As a result, several battles were fought in the area.
Northern Virginia was the operating area of John Singleton Mosby, a Confederate partisan, and several small skirmishes were fought throughout the region between his Rangers and Federal forces occupying Northern Virginia.
Following the end of the Civil War, the conflict remained popular among the region's residents, and many area schools, roads, and parks were named for Confederate generals and statesmen, including Jefferson Davis Highway, Washington-Lee High School, and others.
Virginia split during the American Civil War, as was foreshadowed by the April 17, 1861, Virginia Secession Convention. Fifty counties in the western, mountainous portion of the state were largely opposed to secession in 1861. This region broke away from the Confederacy in 1863 and entered the Union as a new state, West Virginia. Unlike the eastern part of the state, West Virginia did not have fertile lands tilled by slaves and was geographically separated from the state government in Richmond by the Appalachian Mountains. During this process, a provisional government of Virginia was headquartered in Alexandria, which was under Union control during the war. Arlington, Clarke, Fairfax, Frederick, Loudoun, Shenandoah, and Warren Counties voted in favor of Virginia remaining in the Union in 1861, but eventually broke away from the state.
As a result of West Virginia's formation, part of Lord Fairfax's colonial land grant, which defined Northern Virginia, was ceded in the establishment of that state in 1863. Now known as the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, the area includes Berkeley County and Jefferson County in West Virginia.