Brooke, Virginia

Brooke is a Virginia Railway Express station located at 1721 Brooke Road in Brooke near Stafford, Virginia. Free parking is available and located on a hill leading from the road. The station serves the Fredericksburg Line and shares the right-of-way with Amtrak's Northeast Regional, Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Auto Train, Palmetto, and Carolinian trains; however, no Amtrak trains stop here.

Redoubt No. 2, also known as Fort No Name, is a historic archaeological site located near Stafford, Stafford County, Virginia. The site was the central of the three, perhaps four, Federal defensive fortifications ordered constructed in early (February) 1863 during the American Civil War to protect the approaches to the Union supply depot at Aquia Creek Landing, Stafford, Virginia. Redoubt No.2 is an earthen field fortification that is nearly 95 feet square.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

Brooke Point High School is a public high school located about 40 miles (64 km) south of Washington D.C. in Stafford, Virginia, United States. It is one of five high schools serving Stafford County Public Schools, and enrolls students in grades nine through twelve in the eastern portion of Stafford County. The school was opened in 1993.

Aquia Creek ( ) is a 27.6-mile-long (44.4 km) tributary of the tidal segment of the Potomac River and is located in Northern Virginia. The creek's headwaters lie in southeastern Fauquier County, and it empties into the Potomac at Brent Point in Stafford County, 45 miles (72 km) south of Washington, D.C. The White House was built largely using sandstone quarried from Aquia Creek from 1792 to 1799.

Daffan is an unincorporated community in Stafford County, in the U.S. state of Virginia.

The Potomac Creek Bridge (Potomac Creek Viaduct or Potomac Run Bridge) was first built in 1842 by the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad across the Potomac Creek in Stafford County, Virginia, United States. During the American Civil War, the bridge offered the only rail access between the Potomac River and the cities of Fredericksburg and Richmond, making it a vital supply line to both the Confederate and Union armies. In the spring of 1862 as Confederate forces retreated to Fredericksburg the bridge was destroyed.In 1862, the United States Military Railroad was formed under the command of General Herman Haupt. One of the first tasks was to restore the 13-mile stretch of railroad from Aquia Creek to Falmouth that was destroyed by the retreating Confederate Army. In May 1862, Herman Haupt supervised common Union infantrymen from the Army of the Rappahannock in harvesting two million feet of local lumber to construct the Potomac Creek Bridge, accomplishing this task in just nine working days. President Abraham Lincoln, on a visit on May 28, 1862, observed "That man Haupt has built a bridge four hundred feet long and one hundred feet high, across Potomac Creek, on which loaded trains are passing every hour, and upon my word, gentlemen, there is nothing in it but cornstalks and beanpoles." The Haupt bridge stood until June 1863. The Union Army built as many as four railroad bridges atop the same abutment over the remaining years of the war. Around 1899, the bridge was replaced and the south abutment and its approaching right-of-way were abandoned.

Stafford Training School, also known as H.H. Poole Junior High School, H.H. Poole High School: Stafford Vocational Annex, Rowser Educational Center, and the Rowser Building, is a historic school building for African American students located at Stafford, Stafford County, Virginia. The original section was built in 1939, and enlarged in 1943, 1954, 1958, and 1960. After the 1954 addition, the facility consisted of: eight standard classrooms, a principal's office, a clinic and teacher's lounge, library, homemaking department, cafeteria kitchen, combination auditorium-gymnasium, and modern (at the time) rest rooms. Total enrollment for the 1955-1956 session was 228 and the value of the school plant was $200,000. The 1954 enlargement cost more than $100,000 and was funded with a State School Construction Funds grant and cash appropriated from the County Board of Supervisors. The 1960 enlargement added the two story cafeteria and home economics department and was built by Stafford school bus drivers. It consists of a one-story, three bay, rectangular main block, flanked by one-story brick wings in the Colonial Revival style. It is built of cinderblock clad in brick veneer and covered with a standing-seam metal roof. Also on the property are the contributing baseball field (c. 1940) and a diversionary drainage ditch (1939). The school was built by the Public Works Administration and was the only African American high school in Stafford County operating during the Civil Rights Movement. For a number of years, before the 1950 expansions, 11th and 12th grade students were transported to The Walker-Grant High School in Fredericksburg, because the other high school in the county was for whites only. The Stafford County School Board paid tuition and transportation to attend this accredited high school at Fredericksburg. Two students from the school, Doretha and Cynthia Montague, entered Stafford Elementary School, an all-white institution, on September 5, 1961; this was the beginning of the desegregation of school systems in the Fredericksburg area.The former school building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. On June 18, 2013, an historical plaque was unveiled providing a brief history of the building. It is displayed inside. Another sign, this one a state historic marker, was erected in front of the building by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in 2014.

Stafford, also known as Stafford Courthouse, is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Stafford County, Virginia, United States. The population was 163,380 as of the 2020 census. It lies 10 miles (16 km) north of Fredericksburg, approximately 40 miles (64 km) south of Washington, D.C., and about 60 miles (97 km) north of Richmond, the state capital. Marine Corps Base Quantico is located north of the community. Stafford Courthouse is located at the intersections of U.S. Route 1 and Courthouse Road.

Crow's Nest Natural Area Preserve is a large wilderness area located on the southern border of Stafford County, Virginia, United States, between Potomac Creek and Accokeek Creek. The greater portion of the Crow's Nest Peninsula is approximately 3,800 acres (15 km2) and lies within the coastal plain of Virginia. About 3,115 acres (12.61 km2) of the peninsula is protected as part of the Virginia Natural Area Preserve System.Virtually the entire Crow's Nest Peninsula is forested with an impressive, mature stand of mixed hardwoods. Hardwood forests of this extent are becoming increasingly rare in the Virginia and Chesapeake Bay coastal plain due to prevalent forestry practices and fragmentation of natural areas for development and agriculture. The size and continuity of this hardwood stand enhance its viability and its value in providing a large, unfragmented natural area for diverse organisms. Within a relatively short time (50–100 years), this forest will also comprise a substantial occurrence of old-growth forest with inestimable scientific, biological, and aesthetic values. Currently, trees greater than two feet (60 cm) diameter at breast height (dbh) are common, and very large relict tree specimens are scattered throughout the site. The entire Crow's Nest Peninsula is undeveloped and is primarily forested with mature stands of hardwood trees such as oaks and hickories. This is especially true in the eastern half of the peninsula and the northern slopes facing Accokeek Creek. The coastal plain landscape in this region of Virginia was formed beginning in the late Triassic period, approximately 230 million years ago, through the rise and fall of the sea. Crow's Nest is approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) in length from east to west, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) across and rises 160 feet (49 m) above the surrounding Accokeek and Potomac creeks. The peninsula is highly dissected on its north and south sides by steep ravines flowing into these two fresh-water tidal creeks. In contrast, most landscapes in the coastal plain of Virginia are relatively flat and/or gently rolling. Crow's Nest's dramatic rise to 160 feet (49 m) above Potomac and Accokeek creeks is startling compared to the adjacent peninsulas in Stafford County, such as Marlborough Point and Widewater Peninsula, which are relatively flat. A large portion of Crow's Nest is composed of calcareous, or calcium-rich, soil layers from ocean or marine animals that once lived at the bottom of a vast inland sea. Most soils in the Piedmont and coastal plain of Virginia are not calcareous or limey and thus tend to be acidic. This calcareous soil strata within Potomac Creek is referred to as the Aquia Formation, which is 60 million years old. The Aquia Formation is found within a larger outcrop belt known as the Pamunkey Group, a sequence of Lower Tertiary (Paleocene-Eocene) sands and clays that formed in shallow marine environments beneath the western margin of the Atlantic Ocean. The Aquia Formation is composed of marine sediments that are dark green to gray-green, argillaceous, highly glauconitic, well sorted fine-to medium grained sand with shell beds up to 100 feet (30 m) in depth. Today, shell-marl/calcareous ravine forests such as those at Crow's Nest are not common anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region. These plant communities are rare to this coastal plain ecosystem. There are two nutrient-rich plant communities associated with lime sands and localized shell concretions at Crow's Nest. One can be broadly classified as Basic Mesic Forests (G2, globally imperiled). Another rare community found at Crow's Nest that is typically associated with the shell-marl/calcareous environments is the Basic Oak-Hickory Forest (G2, globally imperiled). These are found on two very steep slopes facing Potomac Creek and represent this plant community. Much of the shell-marl/calcareous ravine forests that do still exist on the east coast of the United States have since been heavily logged. In assessing natural communities in need of protection, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation listed the state's few remaining calcareous ravine forests to be conservation priorities. The Crow's Nest site is perhaps Virginia's best remaining example of this rare forest community. Due to the unusual subsurface calcareous soil formations underlying most of the peninsula, the unusual soils are basic (alkaline) and give rise to rare plants and plant communities. This is due to the ability of the limey soils at Crow's Nest to neutralize and buffer soil pH within the range 6.3 to 6.8. Elements such as calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) create conditions in the soil that raise the pH of the soil and increase nutrient availability for plants. This results in the establishment of more robust and diverse vegetation at Crow's Nest. Additionally, disjunct plant communities at Crow's Nest are found that are not common in the Piedmont and coastal plain of Virginia, as these areas generally have lower pH soils. These rare or "disjunct" plants and plant communities include small-flower baby-blue-eyes (Nemophila aphylla) and glade fern (Athyrium pycnocarpon). After assisting and conducting field surveys for rare plant species and plant communities, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Division of Natural Heritage determined in 1999 that "Crow's Nest is considered one of the finest, if not the finest example of mature forests remaining in the Coastal Plain of Virginia." These forest communities on the peninsula consist of several distinct community types. The peninsula supports several regionally and globally rare plants and plant communities, two of which are ranked Globally Imperiled (G2) by NatureServe.

Widewater Beach is an unincorporated community in Stafford County, in the U.S. state of Virginia. The community is adjacent to Widewater State Park.

Widewater State Park is a state park in Virginia, located in Stafford County. Land for the park was purchased in 2006 from Dominion Resources, but the Great Recession prevented development of the property. Ground was finally broken for the new park in 2018 after money was appropriated by the Virginia General Assembly with a bond issue in that year. Current facilities include a visitor center and staff building along Aquia Creek and a soft boat launch and picnic shelter along the Potomac River. A formal opening date in fall 2018 was set. The park officially opened in 2019.The park is divided up into five parcels, separated by private property. It is located on a 1,100-acre peninsula situated between Aquia Creek and the Potomac River, and was the site of early flight experiments by Samuel P. Langley.

Belle Plains, Virginia (sometimes spelled as Belle Plain) was a steamboat landing and unincorporated settlement on the south bank of Potomac Creek off the Potomac River, in Stafford County, Virginia. In the early 19th-century, Belle Plains served as landing for steamboats to Washington, D.C. The landing and its hotel were in turn was serviced by stagecoaches running to and from nearby Fredericksburg, Virginia where passengers would connect with the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. Bell Plains and Potomac Creek fell by the wayside when the railroad bypassed them, reaching Aquia Landing on Aquia Creek as its terminus wharf in 1842.Belle Plains again rose to prominence during the American Civil War, where it was used as an alternate supply point to Aquia Landing by the Union Army of the Potomac. It became a lead supply point during the Overland Campaign of 1864.