In 1752, the House of Burgesses carved Halifax County out of a portion of Southside's promising wilderness that had been part of western Lunenburg County. They named it for George Montagu Dunk, second Earl of Halifax. The economy of the county was established around tobacco and the...
Settled in the eighteenth century as Boyd's Ferry on the south side of the Dan River, the small community was soon washed away by a flood. The name Boyd's Ferry lives on, along with that of Irwin's Ferry four miles upstream, as the locales of General Nathanael Greene's...
In 1767, a time of simmering trouble with Britain, Pittsylvania was carved out of western Halifax County and named for William Pitt, the Elder, English statesman and staunch friend of the American colonists. Pittsylvania, Virginia's largest county, is bounded on the south by...
When part of Pittsylvania's territory was ceded to form the new county of Henry in 1777, a dispute arose over a new location for Pittsylvania's court-house. The state legislature took matters in hand and ordered the town to be laid out in twelve lots centered around Main Street and to be...
Danville grew and prospered because of its location on the falls of the Dan River in the heart of the tobacco lands of Virginia and North Carolina. Today it is an independent city but it began in the late eighteenth century as a tiny Pittsylvania County community by...
Southwest Virginia occupies a vast territory west of the Piedmont and south of the Shenandoah Valley and for much of its recorded history has been the heart of Virginia's backcountry—a frontier-like landscape of rugged mountains, spring-fed streams, dense forests, and isolated...
Rural Floyd County, on one of Virginia's most elevated plateaus, features spectacular agricultural and scenic landscapes, including Buffalo Knob, named for its outline that recalls a buffalo's hump. The county, as the point of origin for several tributaries of the New River, forms a...
Carroll County, occupying a gently rolling plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was established in 1842 with land cut from Grayson County. The county was named for Charles Carroll of Maryland, who until his death in 1832 was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence...
Located at the intersection of several U.S. highways—successors to old stage-coach routes—Hillsville is the county's most populous town. Following a major downtown fire in 1931, much of the commercial downtown, especially along the west side of Main Street, was rebuilt...
Named to honor an evergreen mountain plant native to the region that was in great demand by florists, Galax was platted in 1903 as the town of Cairo. Laid out in a grid plan of twenty-six blocks on the Grayson-Carroll county line, Galax was situated just south of an...
Located along the southern edge of Virginia where it borders North Carolina and Tennessee, Grayson County is a land of impressive natural resources. Virginia's highest peak, Mount Rogers, is one of several mountains within the county. To the east of Mount Rogers the New River, fed by...
Independence reputedly takes its name from the resolution of a controversy about the appropriate location for the county courthouse after the loss in 1842 of the eastern part of Grayson to newly formed Carroll County. An “independent” panel of arbiters rejected several...
Situated at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley, Roanoke County is a bridge between the Valley and Southwest Virginia. Edged by the Allegheny Mountains on the west and the Blue Ridge Mountains on the southeast, it has terrain that is ridged with more mountains and hills. About a...
One of the earliest settled communities in the Roanoke Valley, Salem now reaches far beyond its historic downtown and boom-era residential neighborhoods to include suburban developments, campuses, and large recreational parks. Platted in 1802, Salem was...
Set in a natural bowl ringed by the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, Roanoke is now a business and cultural magnet serving many surrounding counties. However, for the first hundred years of its existence, it was a small community called Big Lick, named for one of...
The area of Roanoke known as Old Southwest is bounded roughly by S. Jefferson Street, Elm and Marshall avenues SW, I-581, and the Roanoke River. From about 1882 to 1930, the one hundred blocks of residential Old Southwest were developed by one of the N&W's subsidiary land...
In the early twentieth century, the city was spreading into South Roanoke, the area south of the Roanoke River that encompasses Mill Mountain. Between 1910 and 1929 an Incline took people to the top of Mill Mountain to enjoy views of the expanding city. The Incline was...
Roanoke expanded with residential and commercial developments to the west and north in the post–World War II period. Interstate 581 brings traffic through northwest Roanoke from I-81 and the airport (...
Scots-Irish, a few English, and then German settlers who came to the beautiful Catawba Valley in the second half of the eighteenth century found a hilly countryside with fertile soil, abundant water, and high-quality building stone. Although none of the earliest...
Wedged between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains, Montgomery County is watered by the Upper Roanoke River on the east and streams flowing into the New River on the west. The county's western half is characterized by rolling uplands at about 2,000 feet elevation and the lower,...
The county seat of Christiansburg was established in 1790. By the 1850s, the attractive town had taken on many of the functions of a regional economic center. Initially the county's most populous community, Christiansburg fell behind Blacksburg by the mid-twentieth...
Located at the headwaters of Stroubles Creek on land owned by members of the Black family, Blacksburg was platted and incorporated in 1798. Despite its proximity to the county seat at Christiansburg, the small community held its own for many years as a local commercial and industrial...
Radford, which encompasses the eighteenth-century Wilderness Road settlements of Ingles Ferry and Lovely Mount, is named for Dr. John Blair Radford, one of the community's prominent mid-nineteenth-century residents. The New River, which makes a horseshoe...
Pulaski County is named for General Casimir Pulaski, a Polish count who offered his military services to the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The county was formed in 1839 from portions of Wythe and Montgomery counties. European settlement of the area began in 1745 when...
After its humble beginning as Martin's Tank, a mid-nineteenth-century water stop on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the community experienced rapid expansion during the boom times of the 1880s. Replatted on a grand scale and renamed Pulaski, the town mushroomed into the county's...
Dublin was created in 1854 when the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad established a depot where the railroad crossed the Giles and Pulaski turnpike. An important commercial and transportation hub for central Pulaski County, Dublin also served as a significant Confederate army...
Situated along a ridge north of the New River, Newbern is a mile-long one-street town with buildings bordering each side of the old Wilderness Road, a primary artery used by settlers heading south and west during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Laid out by Adam Hance...
Wythe is a county of majestic mountains, hills, and meadows colored the bright green of limestone country. Formed from Montgomery County in 1789, it was named for George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and noted jurist who taught law to Thomas Jefferson. Settlement...
Wytheville has a surprisingly rich array of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century architecture. This is due in part to its location on the Wilderness Road that led to the southwest territories of Tennessee and Kentucky. The county government's role in this mountain community's...
The community's dramatic colonial history contrasts with its current incarnation as a commercial crossroads where two interstate highways (I-77 and I-81) meet. Here Colonel William Byrd III made his campsite on an expedition in 1760 against Native Americans on the...
