Timeline of Local History
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Timeline of Local History

* 12,000 years ago--The Paleo-Indians with their hunter-gatherer culture come to Centreville, becoming the first inhabitants of the region.

* 1500 B.C.--The local Native Americans establish a soapstone quarrying industry near Bull Run and Johnny Moore Creek.

* 1608--Captain John Smith explores the Centreville area and discovers the Dogue Indians living here. Dogue sites have been identified along Old Centreville Road, on Cub Run, and on the land that the Meadows of Newgate townhouses occupy.

* 1715--George Eskridge obtains 2,298 acres with the earliest land grant in Centreville.

* 1722--The Treaty of Albany causes white settlement to increase rapidly, ending the isolation of the Native Americans. However, the memory of those first residents still survives through roads that were once Indian trails, such as Braddock Road and Route 1.

* 1746--With the area population growing steadily, a water grist mill is built on Great Rocky Run, and the Rocky Run Chapel is established as well.

* 1760--William Carr Lane builds the Newgate Tavern on Mountain Road, and the village becomes known as "Newgate." Due to the many roads being formed through the area, the tavern became a great meeting place for both travelers and residents.

* 1792--An act establishing the new town of Centreville is passed after a number of adjacent landowners donate 70 acres of land for the town. Some 128 lots of half an acre each, laid out in a grid pattern, are auctioned off. The new name of Centreville probably came about due to the central location between Leesburg and Alexandria.

* 1798--After being bounced around among Prnce William County, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County, the boundaries are redrawn to include Centreville in Fairfax County permanently.

* Mid-1820s--By this time, the town of Centreville could boast of economic prosperity with a private acadmy, at least two doctors, a Masonic Lodge, and several mills and taverns. The growth continues with the highway construction of the Little River Turnpike and the Fauquier/Alexandria Turnpike.