Bluemont
| Bluemont, Virginia | |
|---|---|
| Unincorporated community | |
 Bluemont, Virginia
Bluemont, Virginia
Bluemont, Virginia
|
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| Coordinates: 39°6′40″N 77°50′2″W / 39.11111°N 77.83389°WCoordinates: 39°6′40″N 77°50′2″W / 39.11111°N 77.83389°W | |
| Country |  United States of America |
| State |
 Virginia
|
| County |
 Loudoun
|
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
Bluemont is an unincorporated community village in Loudoun County, Virginia located at the base of Snickers Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountain. As of 2010, the Bluemont postal area had a population of 2,834. At 680 feet (210 m), it is the highest community in Clarke County. Originally named Snickersville, Bluemont changed its name to attract Washingtonians out to it when a predecessor of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad was extended to the town from Round Hill. It is located on Virginia Route 7 just west of the incorporated town of Round Hill. Every fall it is home to the Bluemont Fair.
A nearby landmark is Mount Weather, an operations and training facility above ground for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and is rumored to contain an underground facility designed to house or replace the American government in the case of nuclear warfare.
The settlement of the area that is now Bluemont began in the 1770s when a connection was made between the old Winchester Pike, which led from Loudoun to Winchester via Keyes' (Vestals) Gap, and the Colchester Road which ran from the port of Colchester to Winchester via Snickers Gap (named after Edward Snickers, who operated a ferry across the nearby Shenandoah River).
The new connector road greatly reduced the distance one had to travel to get to Winchester from points east along the Winchester Pike and quickly became widely used. At the intersection of these two roads (present day Clayton Hall Road and Snickersville Turnpike) a small village began to develop, centered around the home of William Clayton, Clayton Hall, and the dependencies he built for his farm at the gap. The village was christened Snickers' Gap in 1807 when a post office was established there.
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