The complex began as a prison farm called the Occoquan Workhouse for nonviolent offenders serving short sentences.

[3] Lorton was also the site of a bunker used by the government from 1959 to 2001 that housed emergency communications equipment to be used in the event of a war with the Soviet Union.

Near the reformatory lies Revolutionary War patriot William Lindsay's c. 1790 estate known as Laurel Hill.

[4] In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a special Penal Commission to investigate deplorable conditions of the District of Columbia's jail and workhouse in Washington.

The United States Congress acted upon this recommendation, and a 1,155-acre (5 km2) tract north of the Occoquan River was purchased in 1910 through condemnation proceedings.

[7] Portrayals of events at the Occoquan Workhouse played a key part in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels, a film about the history of the National Woman's Party, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and other members of the 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement.

The penitentiary buildings of the 1930s were constructed by the prisoners themselves, using brick manufactured at the on-site kiln complex from Occoquan River clay.

Eddie Dean of the Washington City Paper stated that the center became "a sort of parody of its original inception".

[11] According to Dean, at one time it was the "murder capital" of Lorton, but by 1997 the Youth Center became "a relatively calm and safe compound, especially compared with the Quack.

[12] As a result of the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, felons from the District of Columbia began going to Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities.

It required the county to develop a plan to maximize use of land for open space, parkland or recreation prior to the transfer.