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Loudoun County By Nancy and Richard Woodworth Less than 40 miles from the Washington Monument and the halls of Congress lies hunt country and some of America’s most hallowed ground. The transition from the nation’s capital to the horse and hunt capital to the west occurs rather suddenly around Leesburg in eastern Loudoun County. Left behind are Interstate 66, Washington Dulles International Airport and all the trappings of galloping suburbia. Ahead, the farms and pastures of horse country undulate toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a curious juxtaposition, this feeling of being so near, yet so far – so close to Washington, yet so far removed in body and spirit. The juxtaposition is most striking in Leesburg, the commercial seat of Loudoun County. Docents in Colonial costume spin tales and yarn beside the timbered cottage holding the Loudoun Museum’s gift shop as shoppers converge on the municipal ramp parking garage in the center of town. On the outskirts, the congestion of residential subdivisions, highways and strip shopping centers yields abruptly to the tranquility of plantation estates, dirt roads and country stores. If bustling Leesburg reflects Loudoun’s commercial and historic interests, tony Middleburg represents the equine theme so imbued in the fabric of the region. In prime horse and foxhunt country, some of the horses live better than ordinary Americans, as the well-heeled farms around Upperville and Waterford attest. The retailing emphasis (Dominion Saddlery, the Sporting Gallery and The Tack Box Saddlery) and shop names (The Finicky Filly, the Upper Crust) tell the story. The Middleburg Police Department sports a red fox on its insignia. The paintings hung in homes, restaurants, inns and banks adhere to the theme. Middleburg is the home of The Chronicle of the Horse, the weekly hunt newsmagazine. Leesburg is headquarters of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, the Morven Park Equine Medical Center and the U.S. Combined Training Association. The fact that one of the nation’s richest counties declines to pave many of its roads is not a sign of impoverishment – it’s better for the horses that way. Horses and horse people are everywhere. That does not mean the casual visitor is likely to see a foxhunt, however. The hundred or so members of each of the dozen hunt clubs in the area usually ride with the hounds three times a week from fall through spring, but their territories are out of the public eye. More visible are the point-to-point races, steeplechase meets and polo games staged weekends in spring and fall. Its proximity to Washington and its affluent lifestyle draw the rich and famous. The Roman Catholic church in Middleburg was built in 1963 for President John F. Kennedy; his family rented the Glen Ora estate locally and Jacqueline Onassis rode with the Piedmont Fox Hounds and Orange County hunts until just months before her death in 1994. Writer Russell Baker, actor Robert Duvall, philanthropist Paul Mellon, the Smothers Brothers and Washington business magnates like Donald Graham have homes here. Spectacularly scenic is this rolling, manicured and serenely undeveloped landscape, crisscrossed with the pristine fences and corrals of horse country. It seems more English than England, in the words of one resident Brit, and not just in terms of topography. Loudoun retains its early hamlets, settled variously by Quakers, Scots and Germans. There’s no more picturesque a Cotswolds hamlet than tiny Waterford, the entire village a designated National Historic Landmark and preserved as a community of a century ago. Waterford, Lincoln, Aldie, Philomont, Lucketts, Upperville – these are the quiet places that add dimension to the Loudoun sheen forged by Leesburg and Middleburg. Some of the historic inns that housed the Lees and Washingtons have been upstaged by a flurry of small and promising newcomers. One plantation owned by descendants of America’s first organized hunt takes in overnight guests. The aura of history and the mystique of foxhunting are palpable here. Plantation houses and museums, good restaurants, wineries, shops and recreation facilities help make Loudoun County uncommonly popular with visitors, especially on weekends. This is, after all, a place for escape. And Washington, eminently escapable, is so near yet so far. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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