The Big Spring

For generations, this great spring was the town’s main water source. Before white settlement, Indians and buffaloes knew it well. It stood at the crossing of two old trails, one running up and down the Valley and later widened into the Valley Turnpike, the other crossing the Valley from east to west. During the Civil War, thousands of soldiers, Union and Confederate, quenched their thirst there. Sometime after 1896, when the new courthouse was erected and the courthouse square was paved, the old spring disappeared in the course of modernization. The springhouse was especially enjoyed when Judge George Gilmer Grattan held court on Court Day each Monday.

Harrisonburg, Virginia · United States