The Town of Stephens City is located at 1033 Locust Street, Stephens City, VA 22655. Phone: 540‑869‑3087.
Beginnings [1]
Located in the lower Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Stephens City is the second oldest town in Frederick County after Winchester. Originally called Stephensburg, the town was chartered in 1758 by Lewis Stephens, the son of Peter Stephens who settled in this area shortly after 1734. It is situated at the crossroads of Route 11, also known as the Valley Pike, and Route 277, the Old Dutch Wagon Road which was a very important east-west passage through the Valley. The town's location played a major role in the development of the town's transportation industry, most notably in the production of the nationally known Newtown wagon. Stephens City has had a fairly long sequence of names. Although the town was chartered as Stephensburg, it appeared as Stephens Town in road orders of the same period. By the mid-nineteenth century, the name of the town had changed to New Town, appearing as such for the first time officially in an 1854 act of the General Assembly. In 1879 a new charter was granted to the town, referred to in the document as "The Town of Newtown-Stephensburg." The charter was amended in a May, 1887 act which changed the name of the town to Stephens City.
Maral S. Kalbian, architectural historian, Newtown-Stephensburg Historic District, Stephens City, Frederick County, VA, nomination document, 1991, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
