Favorite Articles
The Lonesome Death of Ottie Cline Powell
In a dappled clearing among the trees at the mountain's crest is a memorial to the youngest person ever to climb Bluff Mountain alone. He was four-year-old Ottie Cline Powell.
Nov 1, 1994
The Round Barns of Madison County
Circular barns, popular a century ago for their efficiencies of materials, labor and use, have largely left the landscape. One, in the foothills of Virginia, has recently been re-upped for the next 100 years.
Dec 18, 2011
A Hemlock Essay
A few years ago, while backpacking through Olympic National Park, I crossed paths with a fellow Easterner who hailed from Washington, DC...
Sep 1, 2006
Reader Favorites: 50 Blue Ridge Mountain Secrets
50 Blue Ridge Mountain Secrets published in the March/April 2007 issue of Blue Ridge Country.
Mar 1, 2007
Courtest of the American Chestnut Foundation
The American Chestnut: Is There Hope?
Shifting tectonic plates aren’t the only stirrings around us. Along with the reshaping of global alliances, geographic boundaries, and international currencies, the forest profiles that dominate our very horizons are in flux, as well.
Sep 1, 2005
A Century in the Life of the Forest
The National Forest Service has celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005. Writer and naturalist Liza Field takes a walk through its past and speaks up for its future.
Jan 1, 2009
Courtesy of Steve Brooks, Maxine Kenny
Figuring Out the Forever Forest
What if every county in the Blue Ridge region were home to at least one 500-year forest? The foundation carrying that name has already helped several property owners toward taking part in that effort. The result could be magnificent.
Jun 18, 2018
Chuck Summers
15 Wildflower Favorites
Here’s a highly subjective list of 15 favorite wildflowers you’ll find blooming along the Blue Ridge Parkway – from diminutive trout lily and bloodroot, whose cheerful yellow and white blooms signal the end of winter, to the goldenrods and asters...
Jul 1, 2003
Mabry Mill: The History of A Twice Saved Beauty On The Parkway
The most-photographed spot along the 470 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway was nearly lost before the roadway was built. And then again even after it was decided to save it. Old Ed Mabry would sure stand proud at what's happened to his mill.
Jun 15, 2018
Photo Courtesy of the Blue Ridge Parkway
Protecting A Vision And A Fine Planning Hand
A look at the original Blue Ridge Parkway landscape architect, Stanley Abbott.
Jul 1, 2003
Joe Tennis
Franklin’s Lost Cabin
Across east Tennessee, a mystique remains when it comes to Franklin – the ill-fated “lost state” named for Benjamin Franklin.
Jan 1, 2010
Denise J. Mathews
Tiny Lake, Big Save
A one-acre lake that had been tended to for more than a decade by a group of Virginia high school students was about to lose its caretakers when their school fell victim to consolidation.
Jan 1, 2012
Cold Mountain's Hero
Cold Mountain,” the movie starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger, is based on Charles Frazier’s novel set in the mountains of North Carolina. Elizabeth Hunter paid a visit to the spot where some say Pinkney Inman died.
Jan 1, 2004
Ben Crookshanks
Meadow River Lumber Company
The little town of Rainelle came into being as the result of the world’s largest hardwood mill, run by the Brothers Raine. Gone now for more than three decades, Meadow River Lumber lives only in the memories of older members of its former home.
Jan 22, 2005
Pat and Chuck Blackley
Tragedy in the Making? Sudden Oak Death Looms
Here in the 100th Anniversary year of the first detection of the chestnut blight, the tree that has largely replaced it in the forests of the southern Appalachians is at risk for a similar fate.
Jan 1, 2009
The Carter Family Lives On...
Janette Carter Extends A 60-Year Tradition That Began With The Birth Of Country Music
Jun 18, 2018
Su Clauson
Ray Hicks: America's Premiere Storyman
Beech Mountain Native Says it "Comes Natural"
Jun 18, 2018
The Melungeons: A New Journey Home
Uncertain of their ancestry during pioneer times, viewed as “the boogeyman” in the 19th century, denied the right to vote or own land even into the 20th century, and unable to fully embrace their heritage until as recently as 1969...
Jan 1, 2009
Patty Tucker
Rivers of Change
Recent cycles of drought and deluge have brought water to the forefront of regional environmental issues. Here’s a look at the state of H2O in Appalachia.
May 1, 2009
First Union: The Melungeons Revisited
In 1991, writer Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder spent time in southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee investigating the Melungeons, a group of people who'd been an enigma in Appalachian history for centuries.
Feb 1, 2009
Courtesy Gary Powers Jr / Cold War Museum
Francis Gary Powers: The Virginia Boy Who Spied On Russia And Came Home To Tell About It
Summer, 1943 Princeton, W.Va. "I left my heart up there, Pap, and I'm goin' back to get it," 14-year-old Francis Gary Powers told his father, Oliver, after his first plane ride - in a Piper Cub...
May 1, 2012
Josh Sexton
Reader Favorites: Bramwell, WV - Village of Millionaires
Turn-of-the-century Bramwell, West Virginia, was a rich little town with more millionaires than any place of its size in America.
May 20, 2009
Did Edith Maxwell Murder Her Father in 1935?
In 1935, Edith Maxwell, a 21-year-old schoolteacher, became an overnight celebrity – for patricide she may or may not have committed. Seventy years later, residents still resent the backwoods image the newspapers printed of rural Wise County, Va..
Mar 1, 2006
How The Birthplace Of Country Music Lost Out To Nashville
The roots are deep and strong. Country music's first stars -- Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family -- both recorded in Bristol as early as 1927. So how come Bristol isn't Nashville?
Jan 1, 2009
Joseph Mackereth
Guardians of the Blooms
Helen and Julia Smith spent a quarter century documenting the wildflowers along the Blue Ridge Parkway on slides and in notebooks, eventually influencing the Parkway to change its mowing practices to preserve the blooms.
Jun 18, 2018
Elizabeth Hunter
What These Trees Can Do
That sucking sound? Well, you can’t hear it at all, but the massive scale of the woolly adelgid’s work on the hemlock trees of the mountains of the South is carried out by tiny insects via even tinier sucking tubes.
Jan 1, 2009
Courtesy Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Lynchburg District.
The Storm That Swallowed a County
In late August, 1969, Hurricane Camille produced a once-in-10,000-years inland storm with the strength of a 40,000-megaton nuclear bomb that nearly destroyed Nelson County, Va.
Jo Tennis
Frog Level Lives!
How would a town ever get that name? And why would people still be working hard to preserve its signature building?
Jan 1, 2011
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