Qualla: Orange County, Virginia

Orange County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calstanhope, CC BY-SA 4.0. For four years in the 1730s Orange County, Virginia, was the largest county that has probably ever existed in the English-speaking world. When the House of Burgesses created it in August 1734, its eastern border ran along the Blue Ridge but its western border was set as the utmost limits of Virginia - which at the time meant the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The Colony of Virginia claimed it. The English had barely seen it. Four years later most of it was sliced off to form Augusta County. The Orange County that remains - 343 square miles in the central Virginia Piedmont, county seat Orange - holds James Madison's home, two consequential Civil War battlefields, and one of the country's older wine regions.

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Image: Calstanhope | CC BY-SA 4.0

Orange County, Virginia: From the Manahoac to Germanna

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PlannerGuy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the boundary lines, the rolling hills between the Rapidan River and the Blue Ridge belonged to the Ontponea, a subgroup of the Siouan-speaking Manahoac. The first European settlement in what became Orange County was Germanna, founded in 1714 when Governor Alexander Spotswo...

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Image: PlannerGuy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orange County, Virginia: Madison's Mountain

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aigrette, CC BY-SA 3.0. James Madison spent most of his life on a 2,700-acre plantation called Montpelier, eight miles southwest of the Town of Orange. His father built the original house around 1764. Madison added wings in 1800 and 1812, while serving in Jefferson's cabinet and then the presidency. Aft...

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Image: Aigrette | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orange County, Virginia: The Wilderness

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnnyReb67, CC BY-SA 3.0. On May 5-7, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee faced each other for the first time in the eastern thickets of Orange County. The Battle of the Wilderness took place in second-growth scrub forest so dense that musket fire ignited brush fires; some of the wounded were burned ...

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Image: JohnnyReb67 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Orange County, Virginia: Hospital at the Crossroads

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rutke421 (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC), Public domain. In Gordonsville, where the Virginia Central Railroad met the road south from Washington, an 1860 hotel called the Exchange was converted into a Confederate receiving hospital within months of the war's first battles. Receiving hospitals were triage centers; the Exchange treated m...

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Image: Rutke421 (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Orange County, Virginia: Vines on the Piedmont

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Waldo Jaquith, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of Orange County lies inside the Monticello American Viticultural Area, the wine region centered on Charlottesville. The county is now Virginia's leading producer of nursery, greenhouse, floriculture, and sod, and a serious contributor to the state's wine industry. Four wine...

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Image: Waldo Jaquith | CC BY-SA 4.0