The upper Piedmont crossroads town of Sperryville has remained little changed since the 1920s. Laid out in 1820 by Francis Thornton, Jr. on a narrow level area between the Thornton River and the hills of the northern Blue Ridge Mountains, the Rappahannock County village grew slowly until 1867, when the Smoot family of Alexandria established a tannery here. The resulting influx of workers led to the construction of many of the unadorned wooden residences still standing in the Sperryville Historic District. Intermingled are postbellum houses influenced by the 19th-century Romantic Revival and a scattering of late-19th-century workers’ houses. In the center of the community is an early brick and frame tavern. Most of the Sperryville Historic District’s buildings line U.S. Route 522 and local Route 1001. An absence of significant modern intrusions has preserved the early village image of this quiet community.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia