Qualla: Floyd County, Virginia

Floyd County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Bain, CC BY-SA 3.0. No water flows into Floyd County. It is one of the more startling facts in Virginia geography - a high plateau perched atop the Blue Ridge, divided so cleanly along the eastern continental divide that every drop of rain falling here drains out, never in. The Little River carries most of it westward to the New River, then to the Kanawha, then to the Ohio, then to the Mississippi, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico. From a courthouse step in the town of Floyd, then, the rain you stand under is bound for Louisiana.

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Image: Andrew Bain | CC BY-SA 3.0

Floyd County, Virginia: The Plateau in the Sky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnie Nunley, CC BY 3.0. Floyd County sits on a 381-square-mile shelf in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, with Buffalo Mountain - at 3,971 feet, the highest point in the county - anchoring its southern edge. The town of Floyd, the county seat, is forty miles southwest of Roanoke along U...

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Image: Donnie Nunley | CC BY 3.0

Floyd County, Virginia: Established 1831, Named for a Governor

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnie Nunley, CC BY 3.0. The General Assembly of Virginia carved Floyd County out of Montgomery County on January 15, 1831, and named it for John Floyd, then the sitting governor of Virginia. Settlement had begun nearly a century earlier - James Patton received a 100,000-acre grant on the New River and t...

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Image: Donnie Nunley | CC BY 3.0

Floyd County, Virginia: Deserters Who Stayed Republican

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Giancarlo.pak, CC BY-SA 4.0. Floyd is an oddity in Virginia politics. While the rest of the state was deep in the Democratic Solid South after Reconstruction, Floyd County stayed Republican - and not just slightly. The reason runs back to the Civil War, when much of the county's white population deserted the...

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Image: Giancarlo.pak | CC BY-SA 4.0

Floyd County, Virginia: The Friday Night Jamboree

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US National Park Service, Public domain. In the 1960s and 1970s, Floyd County became a magnet for people looking to live closer to nature - back-to-the-land settlers, artists, musicians, and the occasional millennialist commune. The Rivendell community formed here in the late 1990s. The county's music scene runs deeper ...

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Image: US National Park Service | Public domain

Floyd County, Virginia: Wineries, Shooting Creek, and the Parkway

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antepenultimate, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs through Floyd County, threading past Rocky Knob Recreation Area and Buffalo Mountain Natural Area Preserve on its way south. Chateau Morrisette and Villa Appalaccia, both established in the 1980s, anchor the county's small wine industry just off the pa...

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Image: Antepenultimate | CC BY-SA 4.0