Qualla: Paint Bank, Virginia

Paint Bank, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SneakinDeacon, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Cherokee came here for the color. The banks of Potts Creek - just above where it flows out of Virginia into West Virginia - exposed seams of iron-rich red clay and ochre, vivid enough to use as war paint and as the slip that colored Cherokee pottery a distinctive deep red. Early maps and deeds caught the practice and gave the place the only name that has ever stuck: Paint Bank, sometimes Indian Paint Bank or Painted Banks. Today the village sits at the intersection of Virginia Routes 18 and 311, an unincorporated community in northern Craig County, squeezed between Potts Mountain and Peters Mountain. The Cherokee pigments are still in the ground. Almost everything else about Paint Bank has changed at least three times.

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Image: SneakinDeacon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Paint Bank, Virginia: Bricks of the Same Red

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0. European settlers reached the valley in the 18th century. By the early 1800s, the same red clay that had colored Cherokee pots was being mixed with binders and sold as commercial paint - and pressed into the bricks that built the village's permanent buildings. The Paint Bank Gene...

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Image: Smash the Iron Cage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paint Bank, Virginia: The Union Hole

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. When Virginia seceded in 1861, the village picked the unpopular side. Paint Bank became the core of what local farmer George A. Linton called the Union Hole - an area of mixed loyalties that leaned, sometimes heavily, toward the North. The Order of the Heroes of America, known as...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Paint Bank, Virginia: Tingler's Mill and Five Different Counties

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Colonel William Preston, a Revolutionary War veteran, received land grants here in 1780 and built a grist mill on Potts Creek to grind corn and wheat. The mill changed hands repeatedly over the centuries and eventually became known as Tingler's Mill. The current building dates to...

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Image: Smash the Iron Cage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paint Bank, Virginia: The Punkin Vine and the Hatchery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Paint Bank's brief industrial boom came in the early 1900s. The Big Stony Railway, extended from the Norfolk and Western mainline at Ripplemead, reached Paint Bank in 1909 as the Potts Valley Branch - locally known as the Punkin Vine. Daily trains carried out iron ore, manganese,...

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Image: Smash the Iron Cage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paint Bank, Virginia: Aviator's Notes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Paint Bank sits at 37.57 N, 80.26 W, in the long ridge-and-valley country of western Craig County, Virginia, just over the ridge from Monroe County, West Virginia. The village lies in the narrow valley of Potts Creek between Potts Mountain (to the west) and Peters Mountain (to th...

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Image: Smash the Iron Cage | CC BY-SA 4.0