Old West Ox Road, cut by the sawyers of Robert "King" Carter of Westmoreland County in 1729, crossed this park. Built to connect Carter's short-lived copper mining venture at the headwaters of nearby Frying Pan Run with a landing on the Occoquan River near Colchester, the road became an important farm-to-market route in western Fairfax County during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the Civil War, General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson led a Confederate force up West Ox Road on the way to the Battle of Antietam in August 1862.