Our Company
The name “Devils Backbone” was selected to incorporate this region’s history into modern culture. On September 25, 1746, eight years before the French and Indian War, a party of forty set out from Bear Fence Mountain in the Blue Ridge on one of the most legendary land surveys in American history. They had already spent two-weeks charting various wild rivers to find the true “Headspring of the Rappahannock,” its point-of-beginning as decreed by King George. Among the party were axmen, chainmen, compass-men, note keepers, mathematicians, astronomers, hunters, cooks, and gentleman commissioners whose job it was to make lawyerly decisions as needed and to purchase provisions (somehow) along the way, keeping the party supplied. These hardy Virginians’ descendants are part of our core patrons to this day, according to our latest market analysis. They were hand-picked – the best men and minds in Virginia. Perhaps the most notable member of the party was Thomas Jefferson’s father, a colonel, reputably the strongest man in Rockingham County. Their task was to carve and measure a straight line, eighty-miles long through the wilderness, connecting the sources of the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. This line was known as “The Fairfax Line.”
