Qualla: Staunton River State Park https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Staunton River State Park https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park Staunton River State Park: Introduction https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Wikipelli, CC BY-SA 4.0. The locals will tell you it's pronounced Stanton. The river is named for Captain Henry Staunton, who before the Revolution led a company of soldiers tasked with patrolling the gap between the Blue Ridge and the mouth of the Dan, protecting Virginia farms from Native American raids. The river he patrolled is also the Roanoke. Two names for one body of water, and the locals chose his. What the locals didn't choose was the sky. The sky just happens to be very dark here. In 2015, the International Dark Sky Association designated Staunton River State Park as the first such park in Virginia. On a clear new-moon night you can see the Milky Way's central bulge with naked eyes, the way human beings did for the first 200,000 years of being human, before the lights went on everywhere else.

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Wikipelli | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Staunton River State Park: Captain Staunton's River https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0. Before there were plantations, there were small farms. Before there were small farms, there was the river and the people who had lived along it for thousands of years before any captain arrived to give it his name. The Native peoples whose country this was had been driven west or...

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Virginia State Parks | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-captain-stauntons-river.mp3 0:06 2 full Staunton River State Park: The Bateaux Men https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0. Before the railroads, the only way to move tobacco was by river. A fleet of flat-bottomed boats called bateaux ran from Brookneal down to Clarksville and Gaston, North Carolina, bypassing the falls through channels walled with stone masonry. Samuel Pannilla owned the boats. The m...

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Virginia State Parks | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-the-bateaux-men.mp3 0:06 3 full Staunton River State Park: The Utopia That Failed https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0. On August 8, 1899, a man named J. C. Zimmerman bought 1,426 acres of land at the confluence of the Staunton and the Dan and arranged the buildings of his new colony in a semicircle around a communal kitchen and dining room. He had brought nine or ten Christian families with him f...

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Virginia State Parks | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-the-utopia-that-failed.mp3 0:06 4 full Staunton River State Park: The CCC and the Park https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, Virginia's Commission of Conservation and Development bought 1,196 acres from the Johnson family at the fork. The federal government sent a Civilian Conservation Corps company. From 1933 to 1935, young men who could not find work in any o...

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Virginia State Parks | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-the-ccc-and-the-park.mp3 0:06 5 full Staunton River State Park: Looking Up https://qualla.com/staunton-river-state-park/ Photo credit Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0. On any clear night here, away from the campground lights, the sky resolves into the kind of full dark sky that most Americans never see. The Milky Way comes through with the brightness it had in the founding documents of civilization. Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy, is a sm...

Read more: Staunton River State Park on Qualla

Image: Virginia State Parks | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/0/staunton-river-state-park-wp/dq80-staunton-river-state-park-looking-up.mp3 0:06 6 full