Qualla: Highland County, Virginia

Highland County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. When 60,000 people arrive in March for the Highland County Maple Festival, they outnumber the year-round population of the entire county by 27 to 1. Highland is Virginia's smallest county by population - 2,232 residents at the 2020 census - spread across 416 square miles of high mountain country where the average elevation is the second-highest in the state. Locals call it "Virginia's Switzerland." Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone came through in 1918 looking for the same thing the modern visitor finds: ridges, valleys, narrow roads, and a quietness that has not changed much in a century.

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Highland County, Virginia: Carved from Bath and Pendleton

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Highland County was created on March 19, 1847, when the Virginia General Assembly carved it out of Bath County to the south and Pendleton County to the north (Pendleton is now in West Virginia). The motivation was distance: the western frontier settlements were too far from the e...

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Highland County, Virginia: Where Two Watersheds Begin

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rudi Riet from Washington, DC, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Highland County is one of the few places in the eastern United States where you can drive between two distinct major watersheds in about ten minutes. South of Monterey, the county seat, water flows into the James River and eventually into the Chesapeake Bay via Richmond. North of...

Image: Rudi Riet from Washington, DC, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Highland County, Virginia: The Battle of McDowell

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pete unseth, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Civil War turned Highland County into strategic ground because of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike. Whoever controlled the road controlled the movement of supplies between the Shenandoah Valley and the Ohio. Union and Confederate troops spent a miserable winter in 1861 holdi...

Image: Pete unseth | CC BY-SA 4.0

Highland County, Virginia: Maple Syrup and the Maple Festival

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Highland is one of the only counties in the southern United States with the elevation and climate to support a maple syrup industry. The sugar maples here produce the sap that drives the Highland County Maple Festival, held the second and third weekends of March every year since ...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Highland County, Virginia: Frontier Designation

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Highland County is one of just 50 counties east of the Mississippi River - excluding Minnesota - that the federal government designates as frontier. Population density: 5.59 people per square mile in 2010. There is no Interstate highway in the county. There is no public airfield....

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0