The Orange and Alexandria Railroad, chartered in 1849 to link Alexandria with Gordonsville in central Virginia, became strategically important after the war began in 1861 because it carried troops and supplies. This section fell under Union control early in the war, and Confederates repeatedly targeted it to disrupt Federal movement. During Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart’s December 28, 1862, raid on nearby Burke Station, his forces tore up rails, cut telegraph lines, and sent twelve men under Gen. Fitzhugh Lee to burn the wooden trestle over Accotink Creek. The trestle was repaired and continued carrying Union supplies for the rest of the war, but Major John S. Mosby’s Rangers and Confederate civilians kept up nighttime raids, tearing up tracks and trying to derail trains, often hiding in drainage culverts beneath the rail bed as they waited to sabotage passing trains. After a derailment attempt failed on July 26, 1863, Union Gen. George G. Meade ordered severe punishment for civilian saboteurs. To guard the railroad here, the 155th New York and 4th Delaware Regiments camped along the tracks. The longest continuous surviving stretch of Orange and Alexandria Railroad bed in Fairfax County runs through Lake Accotink Park, on land once part of the 22,000-acre Ravensworth tract bought by William Fitzhugh in 1685. The Fitzhughs were related to the Lees, who often visited Ravensworth; Robert E. Lee’s mother died there in 1829, Robert E. Lee and Mary Randolph Custis honeymooned there after their 1831 marriage, Mary Custis Lee moved there after Robert E. Lee died in 1870, and their son William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee inherited the tract after her death in 1874. The Ravensworth house, built about 1796, burned in 1926.
