Stephens City, Virginia
Stephens City is an incorporated town in the southern part of Frederick County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 2,016 at the time of the 2020 census, and an estimated population of 2,096 in 2022. Founded by Peter Stephens in the 1730s, the colonial town was chartered and named for Lewis Stephens in October 1758. It was originally settled by German Protestants from Heidelberg.
Stephens City is the second-oldest municipality in the Shenandoah Valley after nearby Winchester, which is about to the north. "Crossroads", the first free black community in the Valley in the pre-Civil War years, was founded east of town in the 1850s. Crossroads remained until the beginning of the Civil War when the freed African Americans either escaped or were recaptured. Stephens City was saved from intentional burning in 1864 by Union Major Joseph K. Stearns. The town has gone through several name changes in its history, starting as "Stephensburg", then "Newtown", and finally winding up as "Stephens City", though it nearly became "Pantops". Interstate 81 and U.S. Route 11 pass close to and through the town, respectively.
A large section of the center of the town, including buildings and homes, covering, is part of the Newtown–Stephensburg Historic District and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Stephens City celebrated its 250th anniversary on October 12, 2008. The town is a part of the Winchester, Virginia-West Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area, an offshoot of the Washington–Baltimore–Northern Virginia, DC–MD–VA–WV Combined Statistical Area. It is a member of the Winchester–Frederick County Metropolitan Planning Organization.
History
Founding and early days
The area surrounding present-day Stephens City was originally inhabited for 12,000 years by Native Americans, including the Susquehannock, Lenape, Tuscarora, Catawba, Iroquois, and Cherokee. One of the largest groups, the Shawnee, had already left the area when European settlement began. The tribes that did remain were initially peaceful towards the settlers, but relations soured after resources and land were confiscated. The ancestors of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, received a land grant from King Charles II of England which included a large portion of modern Virginia. After discovering one of the grant's boundaries, the Potomac River, extended into the Alleghany Mountains and that others had also received grants west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a compromise was reached whereby these grant holders would keep their land. One of these grants, named the King's Grants, was acquired in 1730 by John and Isaac Vanmeter from Governor Sir William Gooch, 1st Baronet. The Vanmeter grant was purchased by Baron Jost Hite the following year.Hite, a wealthy Protestant immigrant from Strasburg, Germany, had settled in Kensington, New York, before moving to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In 1732, Hite, his three sons-in-law, and a dozen other German and Scotch-Irish families moved south and settled along Opequon Creek, the present site of the John Hite House. One of the men who had traveled with Hite, Peter Stephens, received a land grant of and settled further south where he built a log house. Stephens was also a German Protestant and had immigrated from Heidelberg.
Peter's house was built on the north side of Crooked Run, later renamed Stephens Run. Peter, his wife, Mary, and their children were soon joined by others who built homes in the surrounding area. The oldest Stephens child, Ludwig, was by that time an adult and operated a tavern at the family homestead. In the 1740s and 1750s, Lewis acquired land from Hite, Fairfax, and Peter Rittenhouse. His land holding was expanded to in 1755 when Peter conveyed to Lewis.
During the French and Indian War, Lewis made plans to establish a town, citing the need for a central area where locals could gather to defend themselves from possible attack. In 1754 Lewis began laying out the town, composed of 80 0.5-acre lots and 60 1-acre lots. On September 21, 1758, Lewis petitioned the colonial government of Virginia in Williamsburg for a town charter. The Virginia General Assembly approved the charter for the town of "Stephensburgh" on October 12, 1758, making it the second oldest town in Frederick County. Among the town's 900 acres, a market house, common, and three town wells were platted. The mostly German-speaking residents soon left off the "h" in Stephensburgh; the town was usually spelled "Stephensburg". By the start of the Revolutionary War, Stephensburg was often called simply "New Town" or "Newtown", as the new settlement on the Great Wagon Road south of Winchester. During the war, local patriots who fought for the Continental Army included Gabriel Stephens, one of Peter Stephens' grandsons, who was captured at Fort Washington along with other Newtown soldiers.
Newtown continued to grow after the war, and by the 1790s, the town limits were expanded north and Newtown's first post office opened. Shenandoah Valley and Newtown's central location at the intersection of the Valley Pike and a route connecting Alexandria with the Cumberland Gap, today's Route 277, attracted heavy traffic through the region, and wagon-making emerged as an important industry for the town. Local artisans operated over a dozen wagonmaking shops in Newtown, supplying wagons throughout the state. By 1830, the town's population had reached 800. In 1853, free African Americans began a settlement about a mile east of town near the intersection of present-day Route 277 and Double Church Road which became known as "Crossroads" or "Freetown", which lasted until after the Civil War. After the January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation, some of the newly freed slaves worked for Union commanders and many of the already free African Americans left the area.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the majority of Newtown's young men joined Confederate forces. During the war, the town was "between the lines", nominally controlled by the Union but with much Confederate partisan activity. On May 24, 1862, Stonewall Jackson's Confederate forces advanced northward on the Valley Pike and attacked Union troops, who were retreating at the time. At Newtown, General George Henry Gordon of the Second Massachusetts Infantry ordered his Federal troops to make a stand. The skirmishing involved heavy artillery fire, but Gordon's men retreated without loss of the important supply wagons. When Gordon left the town to Jackson's forces, both sides claimed a victory. Throughout the day control of the town changed hands six times between Union and Confederate forces.
In June 1864, Major Joseph K. Stearns of the 1st New York Cavalry arrived under orders to burn the town down to help stop Confederate ambushes on the wagon road. Because the remaining population mostly consisted of women, children and the elderly, Stearns allowed the town to stand. He required the adult residents to take the "Ironclad oath", in which they swore that they had not voluntarily provided aid to the Confederacy. The government required the oath, effectively excluding ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction era.
In April 1867, the Virginia General Assembly granted a charter to the Winchester and Strasburg Railroad Company. The company was authorized to construct a rail line between Winchester and Strasburg, linking Newtown to the rest of the nation by railroad for the first time. Though the railroad improved the local economy, which had lagged after the end of the war, it decimated the wagon-building trade. In 1880, the United States Post Office Department, faced with nearly a dozen Newtowns in Virginia, announced that the local post office would be renamed "Pantops". This was changed to "Newtonfield" 16 days later. Dissatisfied with both names, the townsfolk chose "Stephens City".
20th century to present
In the early 1900s limestone was discovered on the western side of Stephens City. Soon after a lime plant built by the M. J. Grove Lime Company began operations, near the Stephens City Station railway depot and the Stephens City Milling Company. This industrial area, nicknamed "Mudville", would later expand to include commercial businesses. The 20th century brought improvements to energy and domestic systems: electrical service was introduced in 1915; and in 1941, just before World War II, the town installed a water system. Passenger service at the train station ended in 1949. This event, along with the effects of a devastating 1936 fire that destroyed or damaged most of the buildings in Mudville, resulted in the demise of that part of town.The construction of Interstate 81 during the early 1960s depressed business development in the town. The wagon road, which had been made part of U.S. Route 11, had led traffic through the center of town, but the interstate passed less than a tenth of a mile to the east, drawing off development, retail trade and ultimately, businesses. This caused downtown to decline. Developers constructed new residential subdivisions both within and outside the town boundaries to the east for access to I-81, attracting commuters to purchase homes. In 1964, the town's sewer system and the only stoplight in the town limits were both installed. A permanent town hall opened in 1978.
The town surveyed its older buildings to establish architectural significance and to determine those that contributed to the town's historic center. The Newtown–Stephensburg Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 1992. Among the contributing properties to the historic district are numerous 18th-century buildings, 19th-and-early-20th century homes and businesses, cemeteries, churches, and a school complex.
Virginia school systems had practiced massive resistance following the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia ordered Frederick County schools desegregated in Brown v. County School Board. In 1994, Virgil E. Watson was elected as the first African American to serve on the Stephens City Town Council. Watson served for one term, from 1994 until 1998.
In 2003, the lime plant closed, ending around 100 years of limestone production and processing in Stephens City. On September 17, 2004, remnants of Hurricane Ivan spawned an F1 tornado that touched down just south of the town along Interstate 81. It caused approximately $1 million in damage and injured two people. It was one of a record 40 tornadoes to hit northern Virginia that day. Renovation of the town's historic center has attracted heritage tourism. Anticipating more growth, the town annexed of unincorporated Frederick County in 2005, another in 2006, and in 2007. The town celebrated its 250th anniversary on October 12, 2008. During the late 2010s and early 2020s, property developments added hundreds of new homes to the town. In 2022 voters overwhelmingly approved a bond measure to rehabilitate and renovate the town's former school complex into a new town hall and community space.