Between 1861 and 1862, the Confederate Army constructed miles of fortifications, but only a handful of sites survived development, and Mayfield Fort is the oldest and most formidable of the former earthworks preserved today. After fighting ended here in 1862, the forts around Manassas fell into disuse, and as the battlefield shifted farther south, Mayfield Fort was abandoned and remained uninhabited for the rest of the war. In 1865, local residents began returning to farms they had abandoned, including the John Hooe family, who owned the land on which Mayfield Fort was built but had left after the Confederate army encamped here in 1861. Once one of the wealthiest families before the war, the Hooes rebuilt their lives and fortunes, and by 1870 Hooe owned nearly $20,000 worth of land, a 42% increase over the value of his prewar holdings, largely by buying cheap, devastated land from neighbors. Despite this success, the Hooes chose not to farm the area where Mayfield Fort stands, allowing it to survive to the present.
