Civil War battles and Revolutionary times come to life in and
around Manassas, Va., where history loves company." The Civil
War may have been the best thing ever to happen to Manassas, Va.
Though it probably didn't seem like it at the time, the nation's
bloody conflict — whose first real battle was fought here, near
Bull Run Creek — helped to spark the development of Manassas.
Before the war and the 1858 arrival of the railroad line that
made Manassas a strategic military point, this area about 30
miles southeast of Washington, DC, was mostly farm country.
Manassas wasn't even formally chartered as a town until 1873,
when war veterans from both sides began settling in the verdant
land they'd seen under less-pleasant circumstances. Ironically,
it was an entrepreneurial Union veteran, George Carr Round, who
really established today's town of Manassas — not far from where
his side had suffered such a surprising defeat on July 21, 1861,
signaling that the Civil War would last much longer than the
picnicking onloo