Qualla: Stafford County, Virginia

Stafford County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Walker Haymes, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sandstone in the walls of the U.S. Capitol and the White House was quarried from a single small island in Stafford County, Virginia. Government Island, six acres of bedrock in Aquia Creek, supplied the warm reddish-tan stone that gave the new nation its earliest federal buildings their faces. The quarry was active by the 1790s. Stafford County had also been one of the first places the English colonists landed in the upper Chesapeake, the place where Samuel Argall captured Pocahontas in 1613, and the home of two of the Founding Fathers' formative years. By the Civil War, the county had been carrying federal history for two and a half centuries. The war added one more chapter.

Image: Walker Haymes | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stafford County, Virginia: From Patawomeck to Stafford

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emridout, CC BY-SA 4.0. For thousands of years before the English came, the lower Potomac watershed was home to Algonquian-speaking peoples - in particular the Patawomeck, whose principal town was Passapatanzy in what is now eastern Stafford County. John Smith of Jamestown made the first recorded Englis...

Image: Emridout | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stafford County, Virginia: Aquia Creek Sandstone

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lee Cannon, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stafford County's earliest export to the new federal government was geological. Government Island, a six-acre outcrop of pale brownstone in Aquia Creek about ten miles southeast of present-day Stafford, was quarried beginning in 1791 to supply the cornerstone and walls of the U.S...

Image: Lee Cannon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Stafford County, Virginia: The Civil War Winter Camp

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rutke421 (talk) 22:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC), Public domain. During the Civil War, more than 100,000 troops occupied parts of Stafford County for years at a stretch. The Army of the Potomac spent the winter of 1862-1863 in the county after the disaster at Fredericksburg, with vast tent cities and corduroy roads cut into the Piedmont mud. C...

Image: Rutke421 (talk) 22:00, 7 April 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Stafford County, Virginia: Quantico and the Federal Footprint

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The federal presence in Stafford County continued into the twentieth century. Marine Corps Base Quantico occupies a substantial slice of the county's north, and the FBI Academy, the FBI Laboratory, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service headquarters all sit on the Stafford ...

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stafford County, Virginia: From Above

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karen Nutini, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air Stafford County reads as suburban subdivisions threading between protected federal land and the green river-edged corridors of the Potomac, the Rappahannock, and Aquia Creek. Interstate 95 cuts north to south through the western middle of the county, lined with shopp...

Image: Karen Nutini | CC BY-SA 3.0