Joan Vannorsdall

Sherwood Anderson and printer Howard White outside the Marion news office, in one of the last photos taken of Anderson.

Finding Home in the Mountains

In 1926, renowned writer Sherwood Anderson moved from center stage in Chicago to the mountains of far Southwest Virginia. Why?
Mural at the George Buckley Community Center in Marmet, starting point of the Miners’ March.

Courage in the Hollers

More than a century after the 1921 West Virginia Miners’ March that ended with the Battle of Blair Mountain, the story is being told in new and unforgettable ways.
Portrait of Stuart Gay and Mabel Pendleton centered on the front of their shared tombstone.

Beneath the Swinging Bridge

The Shakespearean tragedy of Stuart Gay and Mabel Pendleton is still remembered in the small railroad town of Clifton Forge.
A Virginia Historical Marker stands at the entrance to Green Pastures.

Green Pastures’ picnic area was build by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the late 1930s.

Green Pastures Reborn

When it officially opened in 1940 — in the depths of the Jim Crow era — Green Pastures was likely the first U.S. Forest Service recreation area in the nation constructed for African Americans.
Booker T. Washington, 1903  (Library of Congress files).

Washington in these Mountains

Tuskegee, Alabama, claims him as its own. But Booker T. Washington was born and raised in our mountains … and what he learned here shaped him for life.

Departments

Behind Blue Ridge Country

Even More Sweet Virginia Breezes

Casually cruising to Claytor Lake in southwest Virginia, I felt like I had come home – back to where it

CALENDAR OF EVENTS