bin; then the town-ways and county roads, with here and there the
"provincial" highways.

Today, the public roads and turnpikes of Loudoun are unquestionably
better than those of most counties and, in obedience to a popular
demand, are kept in a fair state of repair. One or two of the
main-traveled thoroughfares would compare favorably with the best
rural roads in the country.

Long before the Civil War, Little River was rendered navigable from
its mouth to Aldie by means of a lock and dam system, this and more
far-reaching improvements having been undertaken by the "Goose Creek
and Little River Navigation Company" capitalized at $100,000. The dams
were destroyed by Federal invaders and never reconstructed.

Loudoun is traversed by the Washington and Ohio Division of the
Southern Railway, which penetrates the County centrally from east to
west and furnishes an outlet for her immense shipments of cattle,
grain and miscellaneous products. No less than twelve stopping points
are recognized within her limits, at all but three of which commodious
stations have been erected.

The original purpose of the promoters was to extend this road to the
coal-fields of Hampshire County, West Virginia (then in Virginia). The
name under which it was incorporated was the "Alexandria, Loudoun and
Hampshire Railroad." During the Civil War its bridges and tracks were
destroyed by order of General Lee and for some years afterward Loudoun
was without adequate railway communication with the outside world.

The cost of construction between Alexandria and Leesburg, the first
division of the work, was $1,538,744. The line, many years afterward,
was extended to Round Hill and still later to Bluemont, at present the
Westernmost terminal. Stages, affording communication with Winchester
and intermediate towns of the Shenandoah Valley, are operated from
this point and between Leesburg and Middleburg and Point of Rocks.
Liveries are conducted in all the important towns.

The northern edge of the County is in easy communication with the main
line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio
canal just across the Potomac.

Large steel bridges, spanning the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, Brunswick
and Point of Rocks, afford convenient ingress into West Virginia,
Maryland and the not far-distant state of Pennsylvania.

Further communication with the north is made possible by a ferry
(White's) in constant operation between Loudoun and th