PASSAGE ONE

(1)People who live in Taylorstown have made their choices: scenery over shopping, deer over drive-throughs. The historic enclave, although not untouched by the building boom that exploded in Loudoun County before so dramatically going bust, remains largely rural, with all the benefits and inconveniences that entails.

(2)“It’s far from everything,” Tara Linhardt, president of the Taylorstown Community Association, said with a smile. The bluegrass musician has lived in Taylorstown since she was a child in the 1970s. Clearly, she views its remoteness as an asset.

(3)Taylorstown wasn’t always out of the way. In the 19th century, it was one of the busiest and most heavily populated areas of Loudoun, thanks to milling, mining and agriculture. Its population dwindled, however, when mining and milling became history. Taylorstown now is unincorporated, with the county divvying up its residents among the surrounding jurisdictions of Lovettsville, Waterford, Lucketts and Lees-burg. Officialdom aside, the locals consider themselves residents of Taylorstown if they live within about a three-mile radius of an old store at the junction of Taylorstown and Loyalty roads.

(4)The store, shuttered in 1998, is a passionate cause in Taylorstown. A nonprofit group with grassroots backing is spearheading its reopening as a “’very green” business and recently installed a new system. But the day that the store will again be able to sell bread and local produce “won’t come anytime soon,” said Anne Larson, an artist and long-time Taylorstown resident.

(5)It’s a matter of money, of course, and the store’s boosters are pursuing grants. Meanwhile, the store hosts occasional community gatherings, such as craft fairs and lectures on topics of area interest such as Lyme disease. Lyme disease, carried by deer ticks, is perhaps Taylorstown’s No. 1 problem. “Deer are so comfortable here,” Linhardt said, “that most people have had it twice.”

(6)Richard Brown, a Quaker, founded Taylorstown in the 1730s when he built a mill on the banks of Catoctin Creek near where the store is now. Although Brown’s mill is long gone, the surrounding area has been designated a historic district and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. It is the site of two of the oldest stone houses in the county, Hunting Hill and Foxton Cottage, as well as a mill later built by town namesake Thomas Taylor.

(7)The three-mile radius that extends from the store now encompasses about 1,500 households, said Tami Carlow, vice president of the Taylorstown Community Association. These households sit on land that is alternately rolling and open or steep and wooded.

(8)A good number of the oldest structures got their start as “patent houses,” explained historian and Taylorstown resident Rich Gillespie. In colonial times, construction of a 16-by-20-foot cabin was a requirement for obtaining a patent or land grant.

(9)Taylorstown owes much of its pastoral beauty to its still-abundant farms. On a summer day along Loyalty Road — named in honor of Taylorstown’s Unionist sympathies during the Civil War — fields are dense with green corn or punctuated by round bales of hay waiting to be collected. Placidly grazing cattle and horses are everywhere.

(10)These days, Taylorstown’s farms come in both the working and gentleman’s varieties, and Ken Loewinger’s 175-acre Glenwood is both. Loewinger rims a small horse-boarding operation, but he also works full time in Washington as a real estate lawyer.

(11)“I couldn’t afford to have this in Great Falls,” Loewinger said, gesturing toward a rambling red barn, rolling pastures and a large stone house that grew out of a 1750s log cabin, possibly a patent house.

(12)The D.C.-born Loewinger initially worried about whether the country would be a good fit. Loudoun County didn’t even have a synagogue when he and his wife, Margaret Krol, moved to Taylorstown in 1991. They attended religious services in a bingo parlor. Now, the county has two synagogues, Loewinger said, and he has found the country to be “a richer environment than the city.”

(13)Luda and John Eichelberger would agree. The husband-and-wife volcanologists moved into a log house a five-minute walk from the Taylorstown Store late last year. Eichelberger, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, met his Russian wife while doing fieldwork on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

(14)A profession that involves close observation of remote mountains requires a love of the outdoors, and in Taylorstown the Eichelbergers indulge that love with running and biking. One of their favorite trails loops along Catoctin Creek, where deer browse nonchalantly beneath pawpaw trees and a great blue heron feels at home enough to stand on a boulder and do its dead-on impression of a statue.

(15)Luda Eichelberger, who volunteers at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, said she has “never lived so close with animals.” The frogs are her particular favorite. They “sing like birds,” she said.

(16)Five years ago, Leslie McElroy and Richard Jones relocated from a less-distant locale — elsewhere in the Washington suburbs — but they profess equal enthusiasm about life on their 10-acre Taylorstown farm. Like Eichelberger, McElroy works for the Geological Survey in Reston; Jones, an estimator for a commercial construction company, commutes 120 miles round trip to Prince George’s County. The two have spent much of their free time during the past three years adding 1,600 square feet to their 800-square-foot house.

(17)The project is about done — “finally,” McElroy said. With its completion, she and Jones, who own five horses, plan to make better use of the bridle trails that honeycomb their area. They also will have more time to harness Kallai, their 2,000-pound Percheron mare, to a cart and wheel along neighboring roads. That kind of outing isn’t possible in many places that are within driving distance of the District.

(18)“This is the last little bit of truly rural, affordable Loudoun County,” McElroy said.

Which of the following is NOT to indicate the beautiful scenery of Taylorstown?