Qualla: Botetourt County, Virginia

Botetourt County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gafoto, CC BY 3.0. When Botetourt County was carved out of Augusta County in 1770, it included the southern half of present-day West Virginia and all of Kentucky. Most of a continent answered to a county seat in the Blue Ridge foothills. Over the next eighty years, pieces broke off to form new counties - Fincastle in 1772, eventually Kentucky in 1792, and so on - until in 1851 the boundaries shrank to roughly what they are today. The name comes from a man who barely lived to see the county: Norborne Berkeley, the 4th Baron Botetourt, who served as governor of the colony of Virginia from 1768 until he died unexpectedly in office in 1770. The colonists liked him. The county kept his name.

Image: Gafoto | CC BY 3.0

Botetourt County, Virginia: Where the James Begins

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The James River is Virginia's defining waterway, running 348 miles from the Blue Ridge to the Chesapeake. It begins here, in Botetourt County, just south of the Alleghany County line near the village of Iron Gate. Two streams converge there - the Cowpasture River, flowing down fr...

Image: jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Botetourt County, Virginia: Fincastle, County Seat

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The town of Fincastle, founded in 1772, is the seat of Botetourt County. Its name remembers the Fincastle County that was briefly carved from Botetourt - itself named for Viscount Fincastle, a son of Lord Dunmore. Fincastle today is small and tidy, with a historic district that t...

Image: jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Botetourt County, Virginia: Orchards Becoming Subdivisions

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Botetourt County is part of the Roanoke metropolitan statistical area, and in recent decades the southern parts of the county have suburbanized rapidly. The farmland and orchards that once defined this stretch of valley have given way to residential subdivisions and businesses pu...

Image: jpmueller99 from Shenandoah Valley of VA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Botetourt County, Virginia: Parkway, Forest, and the National Lands

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US National Park Service, Public domain. Three federally protected areas overlap Botetourt: the Blue Ridge Parkway runs through the eastern edge, the George Washington National Forest covers stretches of the higher ridges, and the Jefferson National Forest takes in much of the western mountain country. These public land...

Image: US National Park Service | Public domain