The limestone that became Natural Chimneys began as marine sediment around 500 million years ago, in the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era - a time when this part of Virginia lay beneath a warm shallow tropical sea. Calcium carbonate from the shells of marine organisms accumulated on the seafloor and hardened. Over the next 250 million years, the supercontinent Pangaea formed and broke apart, the Appalachian Mountains rose, and the Conococheague Formation - the rock layer containing Natural Chimneys - was lifted toward the surface. Then, during the Eocene, around the same time as the eruption of nearby Mole Hill, a thin seam of mafic magma intruded between layers of the limestone to form a sill. Most recently - in the last few hundred thousand years - groundwater seeping through the rock dissolved the limestone along vertical fracture networks. The dissolution carved caves, then expanded the caves into solution valleys, and what was left between those carved-out spaces became fins and towers.

The seven chimneys at the site range from 65 feet to over 120 feet tall - true towers, with vertical limestone walls weathered into ledges, cracks, and the occasional ledge garden of mosses and ferns. From below, the formation has the visual logic of a ruined fortress, which is why 19th-century visitors named it after the one-eyed Cyclopes of Greek myth who supposedly built giant walls. The towers stand close together but separated, each its own monolith. Climbing them is not permitted; the rock is too fragile and the formations too irreplaceable. The view from the top, in the historical photographs that exist, was extraordinary - a low-altitude perspective on the broad Shenandoah Valley framed by the surrounding ridges.

The annual jousting tournament dates to 1821, predating most of the institutional fixtures in American sport. Held in continuous form across two centuries - through the Civil War, both World Wars, the Great Depression, and the COVID-19 pandemic - it features the sport of running at the ring, in which mounted riders gallop along a course at full speed and attempt to spear a small ring suspended from a crossbar with their lance. The riders wear period-influenced costume but the sport is dead serious; technique, horsemanship, and timing matter. Winners are recognized as Maid or Knight of Honor and crowned at a ceremony on the tournament grounds. The Augusta County Riding Club organizes the event. It draws spectators by the thousands.

Natural Chimneys is a regional park owned and operated by Augusta County, with a 165-site campground, a swimming pool, a playground, and hiking trails along the adjacent North River. The Grindstone 100 - a hundred-mile trail race held each fall through the surrounding George Washington National Forest - uses the park as its start/finish base. The race brings ultrarunners from across the country to run continuously for 30 hours or more along Appalachian ridgetops. The Red Wing Roots Music Festival, held each summer at the park, hosts the local string-band the Steel Wheels and a slate of folk and Americana acts. The park does not advertise itself as something it isn't; it is a campground at the foot of seven 500-million-year-old towers that have been hosting human events on their lawn for a very long time.