Orange County is a county in the central piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,481. Its county seat is Orange.
Orange County is home to "Montpelier", the estate of James Madison, the 4th President of the United States and "Father of the Constitution." The county celebrated its 275th anniversary in 2009.
History
The area was lived in for thousands of years by different cultures of Native Americans. At the time the Europeans came, the Ontponea, a sub-group of the Siouan-speaking Manahoac tribe, lived in this Piedmont area.
The first European settlement in what was to become Orange County was Germanna, formed when Governor Alexander Spotswood settled 12 immigrant families from Westphalia, Germany there in 1714. This was a total of 42 people. Orange County was created in August 1734 when the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted “An Act for Dividing Spotsylvania County.” Unlike other counties whose boundaries had ended at the Blue Ridge Mountains, Orange was bounded on the west “by the utmost limits of Virginia” which, at that time, stretched to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The colony of Virginia claimed the land, but very little of it had yet been occupied by any English people. Orange County may have been at one time the largest county that ever existed. In 1738 most of the western area was split off into Augusta County. The large county was to encourage settlement further west to counter the French claim to the Ohio River Valley region.
While no battles of the American Revolutionary War were fought in Orange County, 100 men from the county were recruited to the Culpeper Minutemen. They fought in the Battle of Great Bridge, among other engagements.
The development of transportation, including several railroad routes, up through the mid-nineteenth century helped build a agricultural economy in Orange County. The final adjustment of the county’s boundaries occurred in 1838, when Greene County was created from the western portion of Orange. The Town of Orange was legally established in 1834 (officially becoming a town in 1872) and had already served as the county seat for nearly a century. The Town of Gordonsville officially became a town in 1870.
The county saw limited conflict during the Civil War. Most of the activity was centered around the towns of Orange and Gordonsville. The exceptions were the Battle of Mine Run and the Battle of the Wilderness in the eastern portion of the county. The Battle of the Wilderness was a significant turning point in the war. Following Virginia’s readmission to the Union in 1870, and with the loss of slave labor, the agricultural economy resumed with more emphasis on livestock and dairy farming. This was because these activities requiring less physical labor. The dominance of the railroad and the relative ease it offered in delivering goods to larger markets increased the livestock production in the county’s agricultural economy. Agriculture and manufacturing continued to expand into the twentieth century, with a peak of 1279 farms and 20 manufacturing companies located within the county as of 1929. A manufacturing survey produced during the Great Depression noted that Orange County’s economy remained relatively healthy due to its accessibility.
The significance of agriculture to Orange County’s history was great enough that the Commonwealth of Virginia set aside approximately in the western portion of the county as the Madison-Barbour Rural Historic District. The District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 and is the largest such district in Virginia. It includes James Madison’s Montpelier and James Barbour’s Barboursville mansion (designed by Thomas Jefferson, now in ruins). It includes other sites listed on the National Register.
Orange County’s population went up and down following the Civil War up through the 1930s. From that point forward, the population continued to grow steadily, representing an almost 300% increase through the 2010 Census.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of . Of that, is land and (0.7%) is water. The terrain is made up of rolling hills, generally increasing in altitude and slope as they continue westward toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. The highest point is Cowherd Mountain at 1,196 ft (345 m), approximately 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Gordonsville.
Orange County lies within the watersheds of both the Rappahannock River and the York River Both of these drain into the Chesapeake Bay.