Qualla: Pulaski County, Virginia

Pulaski County, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Casimir Pulaski never saw the Virginia county that bears his name. He was a Polish nobleman in exile when Benjamin Franklin recruited him in 1777 to fight for the American Revolution. He arrived in time for Brandywine, became a brigadier general and chief of cavalry under Washington, and was fatally wounded leading a charge against the British at Savannah on October 11, 1779. The county was created sixty years after his death, on March 30, 1839, the eighty-seventh county of the Commonwealth. He never set foot in the Blue Ridge. The settlers who carved their farms out of the New River valley named the place for him anyway, because the United States Pulaski died for had become the country they wanted their children to grow up in.

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Pulaski County, Virginia: Yeomen and the Shenandoah Migration

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smash the Iron Cage, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first European settlers in what would become Pulaski County were mostly Scots-Irish and German farmers who had come down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania in the mid-eighteenth century. They were yeomen — small landholders who worked their own farms — and the rolling hil...

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

Pulaski County, Virginia: Claytor Lake

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the 1930s, the Appalachian Power Company dammed the New River to generate electricity, and the result was Claytor Lake: 4,500 acres of water stretching 21 miles along what had been farmland and bottomland and the homes of several hundred families. The dam was named for W. Grah...

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Image: Joe Ravi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pulaski County, Virginia: The Dublin Depot

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński (user:Jarekt), CC BY 3.0. Dublin is a small town now, but during the Civil War it was a Confederate regional headquarters. The Virginia and Tennessee Railroad ran through it, and the depot — originally called Newbern, renamed Dublin for the nearby New Dublin Presbyterian Church — was the eastern hinge of ...

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Image: Jarek Tuszyński (user:Jarekt) | CC BY 3.0

Pulaski County, Virginia: The Volvo Plant

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnie Nunley, CC BY 3.0. If you have ever driven a Volvo VNL semi truck across an American highway, there is a very good chance it was built in Pulaski County, Virginia. The Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin opened in 1976 and is now the largest Volvo truck plant in the world, employing around 3...

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Image: Donnie Nunley | CC BY 3.0

Pulaski County, Virginia: What the County Means

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Warfieldian, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pulaski County's population stood at 33,800 in the 2020 census, holding steadier than most rural Appalachian counties have managed in the post-coal decades. The Jefferson National Forest covers part of the county's southern edge. Gatewood Reservoir, the 162-acre water-supply impo...

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Image: Warfieldian | CC BY-SA 3.0