Waterford is an unincorporated village in Loudoun County, Virginia located along Catoctin Creek. Waterford is located in the Loudoun Valley seven miles northwest of Leesburg and 47 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.

Waterford was established around 1732 by Amos Janney, a Pennsylvania Quaker, and as such was a heavily Unionist town in during the Civil War and scene of a fierce fight between the county's Unionist and Confederate partisan units, the Loudoun Rangers and White's Rebels, respectively.

The village was named after the town of Waterford, in Ireland, where some of its founders had once lived before immigrating to the United States. Before the Civil War, it was the second most populous community in Loudoun County after Leesburg. The Waterford Historic District is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town is entirely residential with very minimal businesses.

Waterford town center

The village is potentially most notable for its annual fair that draws over 10,000 per day.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Waterford Citizen's Association
• The Waterford Foundation
• Waterford History
• Waterford, Virginia: From Mill Town to National Historic Landmark, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan

• Waterford, Virginia is at coordinates 39°11′12″N 77°36′36″W / 39.1867705°N 77.6099904°W / 39.1867705; -77.6099904 (Waterford, Virginia)Coordinates: 39°11′12″N 77°36′36″W / 39.1867705°N 77.6099904°W / 39.1867705; -77.6099904 (Waterford, Virginia)

Waterford was founded about 1733 by Amos Janney, a Quaker from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Other Quakers followed him there. Mills were built along Catoctin Creek. The village grew until it was the second largest town in Loudoun County (this was before the Civil War). Many buildings still in use in the village were built before 1840.

Today, visitors to Waterford, Virginia, experience many of the same views as residents in the 19th century. Waterford preserves the ambiance and many of the structures that characterized it during its heyday as a flour milling town in the 19th century.

The village is a Loudoun County Historic and Cultural Conservation Site, on the Virginia Historic Landmarks Register, on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1970, the entire village, with the farmland surrounding it, was designated a National Historic Landmark District, one of only three such landmarks in the entire United States.