Oatlands Historic District

Southwest of Leesburg, this 947-acre district in Loudoun County extends the setting of George Carter's Oatlands plantation. Earlier protection covered the main house and about 300 acres; later gifts and easements tripled the area to preserve the open landscape. Three sites are described. Oatland Mills, on Goose Creek, survives as stone and brick fragments and traces of the mill race. A surviving ledger from 1816 to 1825 records Carter's milling and other services, and the mill was destroyed about 1905. Mountain Gap School is a small red one-room building, apparently from the late nineteenth century, and was the last operating one-room school in the county when it closed in 1953. The Church of Our Savior, an Episcopal brick church consecrated in 1878, keeps a gallery above its west entrance. Together they formed a small crossroads community and show how the plantation operated.