VA-E59 Occoquan

Marker text: OCCOQUAN

Captain John Smith explored this region in 1608. The town of Occoquan began with the opening of a tobacco warehouse on the shore of the Occoquan River in 1734. Occoquan grew as the focus of the commerical and manufacturing activities of John Ballendine, who had an iron furnace, forge, and sawmills at the falls of the river before 1759. After the American Revolution, Occoquan emerged as a flour-manufacturing center with one of the nation's first gristmills to use the labor-saving inventions of Oliver Evans. In 1804, Occoquan was established as a town and thrived as a commercial and industrial center into the 1920s.

Department of Historic Resources, 2000