For highway travelers passing by, Mount Jackson is easily identified from I-81 exit 273 by the water tower painted as a basket of apples, which was recently repainted.

Another major road, Howard's Lick Turnpike, was started in 1856, originating in town heading towards mountainous western Virginia.

Jackson was the original terminus of the spur of the Manassas Gap Railroad that extended from Strasburg, Virginia.

Jackson was completed in 1859, but the Civil War stopped further construction so the line remained a spur with Mt.

Jackson became a small but significant rail entrepot for grain, apples, and livestock, continuing to prosper as a mill and railroad town during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As a highly defensible high ground position, commanding the Valley Pike, the North Fork of the Shenandoah River and Meem's Bottom and approaches south, Rude's Hill had a particularly active role in the Civil War, occupied, encamped on and contested by both armies from 1862 to 1865.

On November 16–18, 1863 Col. William H. Boyd's Union cavalry reconnoitered from West Virginia to the area of the Valley Pike.

Jackson fighting, crossing the bridges through Meems Bottom and to the defensible position on Rude's Hill.

On May 14 a delaying action was fought at Rude's Hill by the Confederate 18th Virginia Cavalry, under the overall command of Col. John Imboden.

After losing the battle on May 15, Union General Franz Sigel managed to organize a rearguard on Rude's Hill, with infantry east of the turnpike, some cavalry west of the road and the artillery behind the line.

Due to the exhaustion of the men and low ammunition, Sigel decided to retreat across the Meems bottomland and the North Fork of the Shenandoah River to Mount Jackson.

Gen. Jubal Early rallied and deployed his remaining Confederate infantry in line across the top of the hill on November 22, 1864, to check the advance of two divisions of Union cavalry following them.

In a predawn raid on October 3, 1864, Confederate Captain John McNeill led approximately 50 Confederate rangers against roughly 100 Union troopers of the 8th Ohio Cavalry Regiment guarding a bridge from Meems Bottom, a strategic crossing of the Valley Turnpike over the North Fork of the Shenandoah River to Mt.

[9] In October 1864, as part of Union General Phil Sheridan's 1864 Valley Campaign aimed at destroying anything of potential military value, Mt.

Jackson along the Manassas Gap Railroad in 1861, to which wounded and sick were to be transported by rail from the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Jackson, ran the hospital and the land was donated by Col. Levi Rinker, a large slaveowner and one of the wealthiest families in the valley.

The hospital functioned nearly continuously throughout the war, attending to wounded from the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg as well as the Shenandoah Valley campaigns.

At the end of the war in 1865, Union troops tore down the hospital, using the lumber to build a federal occupation installation on Rude's Hill, 3 miles south of Mt.

In 1822 an early settler bequeathed to the town a lot to build a nondenominational church for the use of any Christian congregations in the area.

This includes a variety of commercial, residential, and institutional buildings dating primarily from the late-19th to the early-20th century, the era of the town's greatest prosperity.

Short Mountain is seven miles in length, from Mount Jackson on the south end to Edinburg on the north.

[17] According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.2 square miles (3.2 km2), all of it land.

Jackson hosts several businesses serving the region, including Holtzman Propane and Valley Fertilizer & Chemical Company (established 1937).

A recent successful enterprise located in the town is Route 11 Potato Chips, which moved its production facility to Mount Jackson in 2008.

Jackson, originally part of the historic Manassas Gap Railroad, that it has put out of service, lacking industrial demand.

In 2016 Norfolk Southern announced that it would no longer be maintaining the railbed, and the rail line has become overgrown with weeds and brush.

Pending formal abandonment by the Norfolk Southern, a consortium of public, private and non-profit organizations based in the counties of Shenandoah and Rockingham, Virginia have come together in an exploratory group called the Shenandoah Rail Trail Partnership to seek transformation of the 38.5-mile out-of-service rail corridor (62.0 km) from Strasburg to Broadway (including Mt.