Clarke's Gap
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Clarke's Gap
Clarke's Gap, also known as Clarks Gap, is a pass through Catoctin Mountain west of Leesburg, Virginia. The gap has an elevation of . The gap is not a true wind gap, but rather a man-made railroad cut through a local saddle point between two ridges to the southeast and northwest created by the drainage of Dry Mill Branch of Tuscarora Creek to the east and an unnamed tributary of Catoctin Creek to the west. The original road between Alexandria and Winchester, known as Vestal's Gap or Braddock's Road passed through the gap beginning in the middle 18th century. Later, in the 1860s the Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad, predecessor of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad was routed through the gap. The railroad christened the gap when it established a station there, naming it after a nearby landowner, Addison H. Clarke. Today, Dry Mill Road (Virginia State Route 699 (VA Route 699)) and the Washington and Old Dominion Trail still pass through the gap. VA Route 7 ...
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Loudoun County, Virginia
Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. Loudoun County's seat is Leesburg. Loudoun County is part of the Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC–VA–MD–WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2020, Loudoun County had a median household income of $147,111. Since 2008, the county has been ranked first in the U.S. in median household income among jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more. Between 1952 and 2008, Loudoun was a Republican-leaning county. However, this has changed in recent years with Democrats winning Loudoun in all statewide campaigns after 2014 and Democrats holding a two-thirds majority on the county Board of Supervisors, reflective of an ongoing realignment of affluent and college-educated voters towards the party. __TOC__ History Loudoun County was established in 1757 from Fairfax Count ...
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Saddle Point
In mathematics, a saddle point or minimax point is a point on the surface of the graph of a function where the slopes (derivatives) in orthogonal directions are all zero (a critical point), but which is not a local extremum of the function. An example of a saddle point is when there is a critical point with a relative minimum along one axial direction (between peaks) and at a relative maximum along the crossing axis. However, a saddle point need not be in this form. For example, the function f(x,y) = x^2 + y^3 has a critical point at (0, 0) that is a saddle point since it is neither a relative maximum nor relative minimum, but it does not have a relative maximum or relative minimum in the y-direction. The name derives from the fact that the prototypical example in two dimensions is a surface that ''curves up'' in one direction, and ''curves down'' in a different direction, resembling a riding saddle or a mountain pass between two peaks forming a landform saddle. In te ...
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Virginia Department Of Transportation
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is the agency of the state government responsible for transportation in the state of Virginia in the United States. VDOT is headquartered at the Virginia Department of Highways Building in downtown Richmond. VDOT is responsible for building, maintaining, and operating the roads, bridges, and tunnels in the commonwealth. It is overseen by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which has the power to fund airports, seaports, rail, and public transportation. VDOT's revised annual budget for fiscal year 2019 is $5.4 billion. VDOT has a workforce of about 7,500 full-time employees. Responsibilities VDOT operates and maintains: * Roads: VDOT's largest responsibility is the maintenance of roads. Filling potholes, storm drain cleaning, water drainage, guard rail replacement, bridge work, tree removal, and trash removal, as well as the maintenance of signs and traffic lights. * More than 21,000 bridges and structures * Snow removal: ...
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Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park
The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park is a linear regional park in Northern Virginia. The park's primary feature is the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Trail (abbreviated as W&OD Trail), an asphalt-surfaced paved rail trail that runs through densely populated urban and suburban communities as well as through rural areas.Description and map of W&OD Trail in NVRPA "Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park" marker at trailhead of W&OD Trail in Shirlington in Arlington County, Virginia. See photographs and description of the marker in ''Part of '' Most of the trail travels on top of the rail bed of the former Washington and Old Dominion Railroad, which closed in 1968. Although the park is long, it is only about wide. The rail trail is approximately wide through much of its length and is a shared use path that is suitable for walking, running, cycling, and roller skating.
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Washington And Old Dominion Railroad
The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad (colloquially referred to as the W&OD) was an intrastate short-line railroad located in Northern Virginia, United States. The railroad was a successor to the bankrupt Washington and Old Dominion Railway and to several earlier railroads, the first of which began operating in 1859. The railroad closed in 1968. The Railroad's oldest line extended from Alexandria on the Potomac River northwest to Bluemont at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Snickers Gap, not far from the boundary line between Virginia and West Virginia. The railroad's route largely paralleled the routes of the Potomac River and the present Virginia State Route 7. The single-tracked line followed the winding course of Four Mile Run upstream from Alexandria through Arlington to Falls Church. At that point, the railroad was above the Fall Line and was able to follow a more direct northwesterly course in Virginia through Dunn Loring, Vienna, Sunset Hills (now in Rest ...
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Winchester, Virginia
Winchester is the most north western independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Frederick County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Winchester with surrounding Frederick County for statistical purposes. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 28,120. Winchester is the principal city of the Winchester, Virginia–West Virginia, metropolitan statistical area, which is a part of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. Winchester is home to Shenandoah University and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. History Native Americans Indigenous peoples lived along the waterways of present-day Virginia for thousands of years before European contact. Archeological, linguistic and anthropological studies have provided insights into their cultures. Though little is known of specific tribal movements before European contact, the Shenandoah Valley area, considered a sacred commo ...
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Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Downtown, Washington, D.C., downtown Washington, D.C. In 2020, the population was 159,467. The city's estimated population has grown by 1% annually since 2010 on average. Like the rest of Northern Virginia and Central Maryland, modern Alexandria has been influenced by its proximity to the U.S. capital. It is largely populated by professionals working in the United States federal civil service, federal civil service, in the U.S. Military, U.S. military, or for one of the many private companies which contract to Government contractor, provide services to the federal government. One of Alexandria's largest employers is the United States Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense. Another is the Institute for Defense Analyses. In 2005, the U ...
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Catoctin Creek (Virginia)
Catoctin Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed August 15, 2011 tributary of the Potomac River in Loudoun County, Virginia, with a watershed of . Agricultural lands make up 67 percent and forests 30 percent of Catoctin Creek's watershed. It is the main drainage system for the northern Loudoun Valley, including all of the Catoctin Valley. Course The main arteries consist of the Catoctin and its North and South Forks. North Fork Catoctin Creek The North Fork Catoctin Creek, long, begins at Purcellville Reservoir east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Between the Hills valley, near the West Virginia border. State Route 9 follows the north fork westward as it flows through Hillsboro Gap in Short Hill Mountain at Hillsboro. From Wheatland the North Fork flows northeast. South Fork Catoctin Creek The source of the South Fork Catoctin Creek is just east of the Blue Ridge's Wilson Gap on the We ...
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Goose Creek (Potomac River)
Goose Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed August 15, 2011 tributary of the Potomac River in Fauquier and Loudoun counties in northern Virginia. It comprises the principal drainage system for the Loudoun Valley. Course Goose Creek rises somewhere near the intersection of US 17 and US 50 at Paris,VA. The creek initially flows eastward down the mountain, falling in its first .Once in Loudoun, the creek continues in a northeastward direction for to the western foot of Catoctin Mountain, where it turns to the north briefly, before reaching the confluence of the North Fork and then turning to the east and cutting through a gap in the mountain. On the east side of the mountain the creek again turns to northeast, joining with the Little River. The creek flows for through central Loudoun County, reaching the Potomac just east of Leesburg,south of Harrison Island,and west of Selden Island. Goose C ...
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Dry Mill Branch
Dry or dryness most often refers to: * Lack of rainfall, which may refer to **Arid regions **Drought * Dry or dry area, relating to legal prohibition of selling, serving, or imbibing alcoholic beverages * Dry humor, deadpan * Dryness (medical) * Dryness (taste), the lack of sugar in a drink, especially an alcoholic one * Dry direct sound without reverberation Dry or DRY may also refer to: Places * Dry Brook (other), various rivers * Dry Creek (other), various rivers and towns * Dry, Loiret, a commune of the Loiret ''département'' in France * Dry River (other), various rivers and towns Art, entertainment, and media Film * ''Dry'' (2014 film), a Nigerian film directed by Stephanie Linus * ''Dry'' (2022 film), an Italian film directed by Paolo Virzì * ''The Dry'' (film), a 2020 film based on the novel by Jane Harper Literature * ''Dry'' (memoir), a 2003 memoir by Augusten Burroughs * ''The Dry'' (novel), a 2016 novel by Jane Harper Music * D ...
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Wind Gap (topography)
A wind gap (or air gap) is a gap through which a waterway once flowed that is now dry as a result of stream capture. A water gap is a similar feature, but one in which a waterway still flows. Water gaps and wind gaps often provide routes which, due to their gently inclined profile, are suitable for trails, roads, and railroads through mountainous terrain. Examples of wind gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia include Swift Run Gap, Rockfish Gap, and Buford's Gap. The last was the original crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Bedford for the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, later the Norfolk and Western Railway, a precursor of today's Norfolk Southern Railway system. Another wind gap with substantial importance in U.S. history is the Cumberland Gap near the junction of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. Gallery Rockfish Gap November 2009.jpg, Wind gap Rockfish Gap, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia Desfiladero C Encantada.jpg, Wind gap opened by an ancient stream on ...
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Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia's state nickname, the Old Dominion, is a reference to this status. Slave labor and land acquired from displaced native tribes fueled the ...
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