History

Lucketts is the easternmost of Loudoun’s historic villages, set along U.S. Route 15 about seven miles north of Leesburg. The place has worn several names. Early settlers called it Black Swamp, reportedly for the black oaks that grew here; from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s it was Goresville, after landowner Thomas Gore; and it has been Lucketts since 1865. The Alliance recalls a Mrs. Luckett who served as postmistress at the Old Store.

A 2014 survey for the state described Lucketts as a crossroads that thrived from the late 1800s into the mid-1900s, leaving a mix of vernacular, Queen Anne, Craftsman and Shingle-style buildings. Its best-known landmark is the Lucketts School, a wood-frame Colonial Revival and Craftsman building opened as a high school in 1913, enlarged in 1919 and 1929, and used as an elementary school until 1972.

The old school became the Lucketts Community Center, where a Saturday-night bluegrass series has run since January 1974. The village sits at the heart of the Catoctin Rural Historic District, a roughly 25,000-acre landscape of estates and farms running north to the Potomac, and the restored Old Store now draws antiques shoppers from across the region.