Esthetician School in Bailey's Crossroads, VA

Hachaliah Bailey, the founder of one of America’s earliest circuses, which in time evolved into the Bailey component of what became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, moved to Northern Virginia in 1837, bought the land surrounding the intersection of Leesburg Pike and Columbia Pike in Fairfax County, Virginia, near Falls Church, Virginia, and gave Bailey’s Crossroads his name. The Crossroads then became the winter quarters for his circus.

Civil War[edit]

The opening months of the American Civil War proved to be a disruptive and unforgettable episode in the history of Bailey’s Crossroads. From the summer of 1861, when the area fell into an uncomfortable and poorly defined “no man’s land” between the borders of two warring countries, until late November of that year, when the area hosted a massive troop review, anything akin to normalcy was in short supply.

Virginia voted to secede from the Union on May 23, 1861. Fairfax County’s northern-born residents-many of whom were its most prominent and prosperous citizens-now felt very uncomfortable. Their southern neighbors looked upon them with suspicion. In July 1861 the Union Army met with catastrophic defeat during the First Battle of Manassas. The army retreated all the way to Washington, with the Confederate Army advancing quickly behind it. The Confederates occupied Falls Church and Munson’s Hill, overlooking Bailey’s Crossroads, and the crossroads’ northern-born residents fled for the safety of Washington.