Unison Battlefield Historic District

Covering roughly 8,000 acres of rolling Piedmont countryside in southwestern Loudoun and northern Fauquier counties, this district preserves the ground where Confederate cavalry and artillery fought the Battle of Unison on November 1-3, 1862. Outnumbered Confederate forces formed a series of quick defensive lines, using creeks, hills, roads, stone walls and buildings to slow the Union advance before falling back toward Upperville and the road west. Much of the landscape looks as it did then. Narrow, largely unpaved roads follow their 1862 beds and are lined with dry-laid stone walls, and the ford on Jeb Stuart Road still works as it did in the battle. Many houses, mills, churches, cemeteries and springhouses that stood during the fighting survive, including the village of Unison, where a Methodist church served as a Union hospital. More than half of the land is under conservation easement, and no modern commercial development has occurred inside the boundaries. The district is recognized for its military history and its unusually intact setting.