Gainesville is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Prince William County, Virginia, United States. The population was 17,287 in the 2020 census.

Gainesville was bearing in mind a changing lessening for stagecoach horses on the Fauquier & Alexandria Turnpike. In earlier times, the village that became known as “Gainesville” actually had two additional names, if single-handedly briefly. In colonial days, the region was known as the “Middle Grounds,” in insinuation to its location between Broad Run and Bull Run. In the in advance 1800s, Samuel Love of Buckland Hall started work on the Warrenton-Alexandria Turnpike. In the hamlet where the turnpike passed through the Middle Grounds, a supplementary stable was erected for stagecoach drivers to switch horses. Other businesses followed, and the unity became known as New Stable. In 1846, a pronounce office by that declare was opened there in Richard Graham’s hotel and store. Mr. Graham after that operated a large stable that catered to the drovers and stage drivers and additional less artificial travelers. The person liable for bringing the railroad through the village was Thomas Brawner Gaines (1814-1856), who had begun buying happening property in the area as early as 1835, and sophisticated became a major landowner.

In 1850, Thomas Brawner Gaines (1814-1856) sold to the Manassas Gap Railroad a right-of-way through his home along the Warrenton Turnpike (US Route 29). After the railroad was completed to Strasburg, Virginia in 1854, Gaines conveyed additional house for a train depot later than the condition that the rail stop accept his name. By 1856, a small community subsequently a read out office flourished with citation to the Gainesville depot.

Gainesville became a shipping narrowing for grain, timber, and cattle and remained a major cattle shipping point into the prematurely 1960s. During the American Civil War, Gainesville was occupied by both Confederate and Union armies and approachable Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run Mountains served as a passage for soldiers to accomplish the First and Second battles of Bull Run. Into the in the future 1940s the Southern Railway operated passenger promote from Harrisonburg and Strasburg Junction through Gainesville, to Manassas and Washington’s Union Station. In 1994, the groundbreaking for Gainesville’s first townhome community began; it was named Crossroads. This marked the initiation of mass-development for Gainesville.