Bigler's Mill was a small town in

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 ar ...

near Williamsburg in York County which is now extinct. It is considered one of the many lost towns of Virginia. The original community on this site was founded by James Bigler in the spring of 1852, who purchased 2400 acres of timberland, part of the tract known as Rippon Hall. He built a sawmill and gristmill with a long pier extending into the York River. A series of homes, a store and church were also constructed. During the Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War, the property was occupied by Confederate forces; in May 1862, Federal gunboats shelled the mill and set fire to the buildings and the pier, for which Bigler was later compensated. After the war, a new community grew up along the river based on oyster planting and harvesting. In this practice, seed oysters were gathered from rocky river bottoms, mostly in the James River, and planted in the muddier York River. Schulte, D.M., 2017, History of the Virginia oyster fishery, Chesapeake Bay, USA: Frontiers in Marine Science v. 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00127 The right to plant and harvest sections of the riverbed was leased from the state, and leaseholds were transferable, a system that provided some measure of protection from overfishing, and prosperity for the lease owners. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

took over a large area in the north-western portion of York County, which was developed as

Camp Peary Camp Peary is an approximately 9,000 acre U.S. military reservation in York County near Williamsburg, Virginia. Officially referred to as an Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity (AFETA) under the authority of the Department of Defense, ...

. All residents of the entire towns of Bigler's Mill and nearby Magruder were removed, and many of the areas were redeveloped. Camp Peary later became well known as "The Farm," a training facility for the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA). Access to the base is restricted. The 100-acre (400,000 m²) Biglers Millpond occupies the site adjacent to the York River.

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