Qualla: Wytheville, Virginia

Wytheville, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. On Interstate 77 northbound through Wytheville, the road signs tell drivers they're also heading south on Interstate 81. Both are correct. For four miles through downtown Wytheville, the two interstates share the same pavement but travel in officially opposite directions — a phenomenon engineers call a wrong-way concurrency, and one of the most unusual in the United States. It is fitting that a town named for a man who taught Thomas Jefferson the law of contradictions should also be the place where the highway system itself enters paradox. Welcome to Wytheville, where the future First Lady was born, where civilians fired on Union cavalry from their own bedroom windows, and where the water tower is painted with hot air balloons.

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Wytheville, Virginia: The Founder's Tutor

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DwayneP (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. George Wythe was Virginia's first law professor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Continental Congressman, and the man Thomas Jefferson called his second father. He tutored Jefferson in law in the 1760s in Williamsburg, taught John Marshall and Henry Clay, and was p...

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: DwayneP (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wytheville, Virginia: Edith Bolling, Pocahontas's Descendant

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TwoScarsUp, CC BY-SA 4.0. She was born on October 15, 1872, in a house above her father's dry-goods store at 145 East Main Street. Edith Bolling — descended on her mother's side from Pocahontas, by some accounts — left Wytheville as a young woman, married a Washington jeweler named Norman Galt, was widowe...

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: TwoScarsUp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wytheville, Virginia: The Lynching of Raymond Byrd

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. In August 1926, Wytheville hosted the last documented lynching in Virginia. Raymond Byrd, a Black man, had been accused of assaulting the minor daughter of his employer Grover Grubb; his older daughters, both adults, had borne Byrd's children and testified the relationships had b...

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wytheville, Virginia: Polio Summer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. The summer of 1950 brought a different kind of horror. A polio epidemic struck Wythe County so severely that 184 people contracted the disease and 17 died — a per-capita rate among the highest in American history. From June to August, parents kept their children indoors. Public g...

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wytheville, Virginia: The Crossroads of the Blue Ridge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit peggydavis66, CC BY-SA 2.0. Wytheville bills itself as the Hub of Southwest Virginia, and the geography backs the claim: halfway between Bristol and Roanoke on I-81, halfway between Charleston and Charlotte on I-77, with US-11, US-21, US-52, and US-121 all converging within the town limits. Big Walker Looko...

Read more: Wytheville, Virginia on Qualla

Image: peggydavis66 | CC BY-SA 2.0