Fences and Signs, Thoroughfare Gap

Thoroughfare Gap is a pass through the Bull Run Mountains cut by Broad Run. Today I-66 and VA-55 pass through it, as well as a railroad line.

Here we see a sign posted by the Bull Run Mountain Conservancy showing area trails.

These pictures are from last summer. I've been familiar with that area since I was a child when my parents took us hiking there. Later, when I met my first husband he was working at a quarry on the mountain. He was still a teenager and had a brother-in-law who lived up there.

Railroad tracks, Thoroughfare Gap

Civil War Trails Marker

Chapman's Mill

Heart of the Battle of Thoroughfare Gap

<On August 28, 1862, during the Battle of Thoroughfare Gap, the mill changed hands three times and suffered extensive damage as Confederate forces pushed their way through the gap from the west. Skirmishers from both armies alternately gained the mills upper windows and fired on their adversaries. Confederate Gen. James Longstreet’s wing defeated Union Gen. James B. Rickett’s smaller division here. This victory enabled Longstreet’s wing to unite with that of Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson near Manassas Junction, where Gen. Robert E. Lee subsequently defeated Union Gen. John Pope in the Second Battle of Manassas.
The Beverley family restored the mill by 1878, and it remained in operation under successive owners until 1951. An arson fire in 1998 reduced it once more to ruins. Chapman’s Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.>>