The Potomac River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States that flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2), and is the fourth-largest river along the East Coast of the United States and the 21st-largest in the United States. More than 5 million people live within its watershed.
Hampshire County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,093. Its county seat is Romney, West Virginia's oldest town (1762). The county was created by the Virginia General Assembly in 1754, from parts of Frederick and Augusta Counties (Virginia) and is the state's oldest county. The county lies in both West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands regions.
Paw Paw is a town in Morgan County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 410 at the 2020 census. The town is known for the nearby Paw Paw Tunnel. Paw Paw was incorporated by the Circuit Court of Morgan County on April 8, 1891, and named after pawpaw, a wild fruit that grows in abundance throughout this region. Paw Paw is the westernmost incorporated community in Morgan County, and the Hagerstown-Martinsburg, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Potomac River forms the northern boundary of the peninsula; the Rappahannock River demarcates it on the south. The land between these rivers was formed into Northumberland County in 1648, prior to the creation of Westmoreland County and Lancaster County.
The Allegheny Mountain Range, informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less developed eras. The Allegheny Mountains have a northeast–southwest orientation, running for about 300 miles (480 km) from north-central Pennsylvania, southward through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia.
Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The region radiates westward and southward from Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, and has a population of 3,257,133 people as of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, representing of a third of the state's total population. It is the most populous region in both Virginia and the regional Washington metropolitan area.
The Allegheny Front is the major southeast- or east-facing escarpment in the Allegheny Mountains in southern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, eastern West Virginia, and western Virginia. The Allegheny Front forms the boundary between the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians to its east and the Appalachian Plateau to its west. The Front is closely associated with the Appalachian Mountains' Eastern Continental Divide, which in this area divides the waters of the Ohio/Mississippi river system, flowing to the Gulf of Mexico, from rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay and from there into the Atlantic Ocean.
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron was a British peer, military officer and planter. The only member of the British peerage to reside in Britain's North American colonies, Fairfax owned the Northern Neck Proprietary in the colony of Virginia, where he spent the majority of his life. The proprietary had been granted to Fairfax's ancestor John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper by Charles II of England in 1649.
John Savage was an 18th-century surveyor of colonial Virginia. He surveyed as part of a 1736 expedition to settle a boundary dispute between Lord Fairfax and the English Privy Council concerning the extent of the vast Northern Neck land grant.
Fort Pearsall was an early frontier fort constructed in 1756 in Romney, West Virginia to protect local settlers in the South Branch Potomac River valley against Native American raids. The area around present-day Romney had been settled as early as 1725 by hunters and traders in the valley.
Thomas Lewis was an Irish-American surveyor, lawyer, politician and pioneer of early western Virginia. He was among the signers of the Fairfax Resolves, represented Augusta County at four of the five Virginia Revolutionary Conventions and the first session of the Virginia House of Delegates during the American War for Independence, and after the conflict, represented newly established Rockingham County at the Virginia Ratification Convention, as well as contributed to the settlement of an area that long after his death become part of West Virginia.
The Northern Neck Proprietary – also called the Northern Neck land grant, Fairfax Proprietary, or Fairfax Grant – was a land grant first contrived by the exiled English King Charles II in 1649 and encompassing all the lands bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in colonial Virginia. This constituted up to 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km2) of Virginia's Northern Neck and a vast area northwest of it.
Fairfax's Devisee v. Hunter's Lessee, 11 U.S. 603 (1813), was a United States Supreme Court case arising out of the acquisition of lands originally granted by the British King Charles II in 1649 to Lord Fairfax in the Northern Neck and westward.
The Fairfax Line was a surveyor's line run in 1746 to establish the limits of the "Northern Neck land grant" in colonial Virginia.
The United States District Court for the District of Potomac was a short-lived United States federal court. Named for the Potomac River, it had jurisdiction over the District of Columbia and pieces of Maryland and Virginia, making it the first United States district courts to cross state lines. It was established in the Judiciary Act of 1801 – also known as the "Midnight Judges Act", because it sought to redistrict the federal courts to allow outgoing President John Adams to make additional appointments – and was abolished in the Judiciary Act of 1802. The language of the first Judiciary Act, setting forth the geographic jurisdiction of the District, was as follows:
And a new district shall be established, in the districts of Maryland and Virginia, to consist of the territory of Columbia, of all that part of the district of Maryland, which lies west and southwest of the river Patuxent, and of the western branch thereof, and south of the line which divides the county of Montgomery in the last mentioned district, from the county of Frederick, and of a line to be drawn from the termination of the last mentioned line, a northeast course to the western branch of the Patuxent; and of all that part of the district of Virginia, which lies north of the river Rappahannock, and east of the line which divides the counties of Fauquier and Loudon, in the last mentioned district from the counties of Fairfax, Prince William, and Stafford; which new district shall be called the district of Potomac, and a district court in and for the same, shall be holden at Alexandria, by the district judge of the district of Maryland, on the first Tuesday in April, and the first Tuesday in October, in each and every year.
Belvoir was the plantation and estate of colonial Virginia's prominent William Fairfax family. Operated with the forced labor of enslaved people, it was located on the west bank of the Potomac River on the present site of Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Wappocomo is a late 18th-century Georgian mansion and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River north of Romney, Hampshire County, West Virginia, USA. It is located along Cumberland Road and the South Branch Valley Railroad.
Maryland v. West Virginia, 217 U.S. 1 (1910), is a 9-to-0 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the boundary between the American states of Maryland and West Virginia is the south bank of the North Branch Potomac River. The decision also affirmed criteria for adjudicating boundary disputes between states, which said that decisions should be based on the specific facts of the case, applying the principles of law and equity in such a way that least disturbs private rights and title to land.
Valley was a populated place and post office on the South Branch line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It was centered near the intersection of West Sioux Lane and Depot Valley Road, now located within the present-day corporate boundaries of Romney. Valley developed in 1884 following the completion of the South Branch line when the rail line's original southern terminus and corresponding Romney Depot were built there. The United States Post Office Department established a post office at Valley on May 19, 1928, remaining in operation until its disestablishment on June 15, 1937. Following the closure of Valley's post office, its mail was routed through the post office in Romney.
The North Branch Potomac River flows from Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its confluence with the South Branch Potomac River near Green Spring, West Virginia, where it turns into the Potomac River proper.
