New Market Historic District

New Market is a small Shenandoah Valley town stretching just under a mile along U.S. Route 11, the old Valley Pike. It began at a crossroads where John Sevier opened a trader's store in 1761, and Peter Palsel laid out the town in 1785. It was officially named New Market in 1796. Most buildings are two-story brick or frame structures with gable roofs set at the front of their lots, and about two thirds of the roughly one hundred along the main road date from the nineteenth century. Notable buildings include the Strayer House, later the Lee-Jackson Hotel, a limestone Henkel family house, a log store, and Emmanuel Lutheran Church. The Henkel Press, founded in 1806, is the oldest Lutheran press in America. The town also figured in the Civil War battle of May 15, 1864. Growth stopped in the late nineteenth century when the Valley Pike traffic dwindled and the railroad bypassed it, which preserved the town's early character.