If you exit I-66 at Haymarket and take the John Marshall Highway (Rte 55) towards Fauquier County, you will pass through the tiny community of Historic Thoroughfare.
At the foot of Bull Run Mountain, the community sits at the crossroads between western Virginia and northern Virginia. During colonial times, tribal natives came over the mountain pass — later called “Thoroughfare Gap” — to hunt and trade. The Manassas Gap Railroad ran through in the 1850’s and, during the Civil War, the Union and Confederate Armies scrimmaged over the hilly landscape, just four miles from the Manassas battlefield.
Along the way, Historic Thoroughfare created its own community: a unique amalgamation of free blacks, Indian migrants, and other small farmers. They started families, worked their own farms and founded their own churches. And when people passed on, they were buried in the family cemeteries along today’s John Marshall Highway.
Which takes us to the present day …
In 2017, Prince William County asserted a tax lien against one of the burial properties called the “Scott Cemetery.” Three years later, the otherwise-vacant property was sold at a tax auction to a local brewery, which wanted to create a stage for live music. In early 2021, the site was closed off and then bulldozed, permanently altering the landscape.
Just your average land use disaster, right? Not so fast.
Article X, Section 6(a)(3) of the Virginia Constitution exempts “private or public burying grounds” from taxation.
In other words, the property never should have been taxed — and any County “sale” is illegal. The cemetery property must be returned to the family. And the brewery needs another site for its sound stage.
I am representing the Fletcher-Allen-Scott families in this legal battle, which is currently pending in Prince William County Circuit Court (just like the Manassas Battlefield case). Today I had a chance to visit the site and meet family members. (The bulldozed site is in the photo behind us).
The Coalition to Save Historic Thoroughfare is raising attention and funds for this battle, which is very pertinent to similar fights in Culpeper, Fauquier, and Orange Counties. All over Piedmont Virginia, developers (mostly but not exclusively data centers) are purchasing and developing land at an alarming rate. Community institutions are being lost.
But will the judicial system push back? Stay tuned.
JCP Notes: This week is the deadline if you want to advertise in the first edition of The Fairfax Independent, which drops in two weeks. Thank you to the local businesses which have stepped up to support local journalism.
I hope you all enjoy the last few days of summer. Thomas and Mary Walton are heading back to university — and Ida will be entering eighth grade on Monday.
Welcome back, students and teachers. Have a great year!