Prince William Forest Park

Tobacco

Once the land here was bountiful, and the water that ran through it was pure. Algonquin-speaking Native Americans, who had lived in the region for thousands of years, hunted, fished, and raised crops. Then, in 1607, Europeans came to Virginia – and things began to change. The settlers encountered a rich natural world, including tobacco, which they soon adopted for their own use. The newcomers also brought with them the notion of dominion over nature and used agricultural practices that nearly destroyed the land.

By the late 1600s smoking tobacco was a popular European habit, and Virginia landholders met the demand by clear-cutting area forests to create large tobacco plantations and to grow rich. In the 1720s, Scottish merchants created the port of Dumfries at the mouth of Quantico Creek to warehouse and export the crop. Intensive tobacco cultivation proved unhealthy for the land, and the exposed topsoil washed from plantations and filled Dumfries harbor. Within decades, the soil was impoverished, the muddied harbor was isolated from the Potomac shipping channel, and the economic boom had ended. Plantations were abandoned or divided into small farms; and for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, a succession of farmers cleared, cultivated, and deserted the marginally productive land.

Mines

At the same time a new Nation emerged. In 1781 George Washington led his army along Telegraph Road, then called Potomac Path, to Yorktown where they won America’s Independence. From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War took its toll on the area as Union and Confederate troops skirmished here. Hope for economic recovery came in 1889 with the opening of the Cabin Branch mine which employed 300 workers in the mining of pyrite for sulfur, an ingredient in gunpowder. The mine prospered through World War I, but low prices and labor troubles closed it in 1919.

By 1930 only a few small farms remained, and the degraded land gradually returned to forest. Its ecological healing got a boost in 1936 when the Quantico and Chopawamsic Creek watersheds area was selected as one of 46 national land-use projects that reclaimed marginal farm lands for recreation activities. In 1940 the area became a unit of the National Park System, and the restoration and preservation of the woodland watershed were ensured. By 1941 the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed roads, bridges, dams, and 5 rustic cabin camps to serve as summer camps for urban youth groups. Today these rustic camps, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are still used for group retreats.

Top Secret Military Post

During World War II the park became a top secret military post. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, operated training schools here known as Areas A and C. In Area A agents were trained to gather information, and the new spies practiced their top secret skills in nearby communities. In Area C the OSS trained radio engineers to operate stations that relayed secret messages from agents behind enemy lines.

In 1948 the area was returned to public use and was named Prince William Forest Park after the Virginia county in which it is located. With more than 17,000 acres, it is the greatest expanse of Piedmont forest in the US National Park System and the largest natural park area in the metropolitan Washington area. The park shelters native plants and wildlife and offers visitors an opportunity for outdoor solitude and recreation.