In August 1771, King George III of Great Britain granted eighty-two acres including Falling Spring Falls to Gabriel Jones. In 1780, Thomas Jefferson, as Governor of Virginia, granted the property to Major Thomas Massie. Jefferson later visited to survey the falls and mentioned them in his 1781 manuscripts, Notes on the State of Virginia, writing that "the only remarkable cascade in this country is that of the Falling Spring in Augusta" and that it fell over a rock two hundred feet into the valley below. From 1914 to 1926, the Ohio C. Barber Fertilizer Company mined fertilizer there in Barber, Virginia, now called Falling Spring, and in 1927 the Falling Spring Lime Company assumed operations until 1941. Mining operations required the relocation of the falls, where the water now plunges only eighty feet. Electricity generated from the falls powered the lime crushing plant and an electric railway hauling travertine from the mine. On November 28, 2004, Mead Westvaco donated Falling Spring Falls and approximately nineteen surrounding acres to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.