Quantico Base, VA

Quantico Base is a census-designated place that describes the housing and developed portions of Marine Corps Base Quantico across Prince William and Stafford counties, Virginia. It is different from the incorporated Town of Quantico on the Potomac, even though the two are knitted together by the base. The town’s first land patents date to 1654, and its roads and waterways carried traffic through the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War. In 1917 the Marine Corps leased the Quantico Company’s land for wartime training, purchasing it a year later; that decision turned an old river town into a major Marine installation.

The base is now associated with Marine training, officer education, and combat development, while the little town beside it still has streets lined with restaurants, tailors, barbers, and businesses serving the military community. The Potomac and the base reservation hem the town in, giving rise to its old “town that cannot grow” nickname. The local scoop is that “Quantico Base” on a census map is not just another name for the town: it is the CDP label for the installation’s residential landscape, while the Town of Quantico remains the older civic place along the river.