Local History and Attractions

Geo-historical Background

The Middleton Inn sits on the southwest corner of the town of Washington – popularly known as “Little Washington” – in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The town is the seat of Virginia’s Rappahannock County, which also includes the villages of Amissville, Chester Gap, Flint Hill, Sperryville, and Woodville. It is part of the so-called “Piedmont” region of Virginia, dubbed after the French expression “Pied du Mont”, meaning “foot of the mountain” – in this case referring to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The region’s rolling hills gently rise to 1,000 feet, before doubling that height along the Blue Ridge’s rugged topography and water streams which source some of the local rivers (such as the Rappahannock river). This geography appears to have been modulated by rocks formed 500 to 2,500 million years ago along the so-called Ancient Appalachian mountain belt.

Early settlers were small farmers who constantly encroached upon the Indian lands. These settlers were mostly English, but also included those of Scotch, Irish, and German extraction. Rappahannock was designated a distinct county in 1833 under the authority of Lord Fairfax, taking its name from the river that has its source in nearby mountain springs. Legend says that Little Washington was the first of the thirty or so U.S. cities named after George Washington, being surveyed by to-be-president himself in 1749 before its establishment as a town in 1796. The town became the county seat in 1833. By the early 1860s, the Union Army of Virginia would be making Rappahannock a gateway to the confrontations between Union and Confederate forces in northern Shenandoah, when more than one-sixth of the county’s white population then joined the Confederate army while many Rappahannock natives joined the Union, becoming members of the U.S. Colored Troops. Fasting forward into the 20th century, Little Washington would add further to the area’s rich history by having a female mayor and an all-woman city council in 1950 and being home to the Inn at Little Washington — one of the few restaurants nationwide to be granted the prestigious 3-star award by Michelin.

Touristic Attractions