 Orange County, as a legal entity, was created in August 1734 when the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted "An Act for Dividing Spotsylvania County".Unlike other counties whose boundaries had ended at the Blue Ridge Mountains, Orange was bounded on the west "by the utmost limits of Virginia" which, at that time, stretched to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes.The colony of Virginia claimed the land, but very little of it had yet been occupied by any English.