Can you find Route 1, between Occoquan and Fredericksburg?
What modern road north of Occoquan follows the route shown in this map?
Source: Joshua Fry & Peter Jefferson 1771 map of Virginia,
Library of Congress
By building the roads on the tops of the ridges, the Virginians minimized the number of stream crossings or fords where wagons would often get stuck and travellers might get wet. Also, the dirt roads on the ridges dried out faster than the muddy paths in the valleys - an important consideration before John Loudon MacAdam pioneered building a multilayered surface of crushed stone so roadbeds stayed solid even in bad weather.
Route 123 through the Fairfax campus of GMU is a good example of a ridge road. It was initially built to allow the Carter family to haul copper ore from today's Frying Pan Park in northern Fairfax County to the Occoquan River. In 1729, Robert "King" Carter invested in cutting a road south through the wilderness of Fairfax County to the Fall Line near the mouth of the Occoquan River. It was called Ox Road in recognition of the draft animals that were used to haul carts on the route.
The Carters would have preferred to haul the ore north, a shorter distance to the Potomac River, but the rival Lee family had claimed all the good landing spots along that river's shoreline. In the end, Carter's copper mine was a failure. There was very little copper in the rock, but the haul road has been invaluable to this day. The modern city of Fairfax is a high point on that road, and it was worth the effort to haul the wagons up that hill in order to stay on the dry ridgeline. South of Fairfax, the now-paved Route 123 still follows the divide between Pohick and Pope's Head creeks past the Fairfax campus.
Now compare the route of modern highways with old roads shown on the early maps of Virginia:
It may surprise you to see how few roads criss-crossed Northern Virginia 350 years ago. Still, can you see Route 1, stretching from Alexandria to Fredericksburg? Can you see Route 17, stretching from Fredericksburg to Neville's Ordinary (north of modern-day Warrenton)? Can you guess at the modern roads that correspond to the two roads angling to the northwest from Alexandria?
All three campuses of GMU - now in Arlington, Fairfax, and Prince William counties - were in the area designated as Stafford County back in the days of King Carter, when Route 123 was first built nearly 300 years ago. In 1730 the House of Burgesses created a new county and designated all the land north of Chopawamsic Creek as Prince William County. In 1742, as population in the Potomac watershed continued to grow, Fairfax County was carved out of Prince William County. Compare roads and political boundaries/cultural features in: