[1] Arcola village is in the northern part of the CDP, along the South Fork of Broad Run, a north-flowing tributary of the Potomac River.

Thirteen years later the Post Office once again saw fit to locate a branch in the vicinity, but the success of the Little River Turnpike (present day U.S. Route 50) dictated that it would be located on that road south of the village and known on local maps as simply "Arcola P.O."

In the 1850s Arcola had a brush with the big time when the construction of the Loudoun Branch of the Manassas Gap Railroad was completed on the northern border of the village.

During the Gettysburg Campaign of June–July 1863, troops from the Union Army of the Potomac's 11th and 1st Corps marched and camped in and around the town of "Gum Spring" according to dispatches (present-day Arcola), as they meandered north toward Leesburg and into Maryland.

John Franklin Ryan (1848–1936), former representative in the Virginia House of Delegates, is buried in the Darnes Cemetery in Arcola.