Fairfax Line

Here ran the Fairfax Line, surveyed in 1746 to mark the southwestern boundary of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a 5.2-million-acre land grant inherited by Thomas, 6th Lord Fairfax. The grant encompassed all the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Peter Jefferson and Robert Brooke, representing the Virginia colony, and Benjamin Winslow and Thomas Lewis, representing Lord Fairfax, surveyed this 76-mile line between the headsprings of these rivers during a nearly two-month expedition over several rugged and largely uninhabited mountain ranges. The Fairfax Line marks the boundary between Rockingham and Shenandoah Counties and, for nine miles, between Virginia and West Virginia.