The Paeonian Springs Historic District, about four miles west of Leesburg and at the base of the Catoctin Mountain in Loudoun County, encompasses nearly three dozen structures that date mostly from between 1900 and 1910. Established by entrepreneurs who marketed its “healthful” spring waters, Paeonian Springs was conveniently located on the Washington and Ohio Railroad, which connected the area with metropolitan Washington, D.C.  This offered an ideal opportunity to establish a village for affluent families desiring to escape D.C.’s humid summers. The railroad also made possible shipment of bottled spring water to D.C.’s increasingly health-conscious residents. The community thrived for about 30 years, after which time strict federal regulations for bottled water, as well as the advent of the automobile, reduced the village’s commercial activities and residential popularity. Although the train station is gone and the rail line has been converted to a bike trail, many of the structures from Paeonian Springs’s heyday survive, including grand mansions, simple bungalows, two hotels or boardinghouses, some commercial stores, an early 20th-century school building, a water bottling plant, and a public springhouse.