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(Photograph by D Hughes) -
(Photograph by D Hughes) -
(Photograph by D Hughes)
The Baxter House provides one of the best illustrations of the small log houses that once dominated the landscape of the central Shenandoah Valley. The dwelling consists of two single-pen, two-story, one-room log sections, with rare full-dovetailed log notching in the western section and half-dovetailing on the eastern section. The massive limestone exterior chimney on the east end provides further documentation of the fine local building craftsmanship. A later shed-roof frame addition on the rear gives the structure its salt-box shape. In 1789, the building's owner, Scottish immigrant George Baxter, possessed more than one thousand acres in this picturesque setting overlooking Linville Creek. His son George became the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington (RB16) in 1799.