9 Best Small Towns to Visit in Virginia

Virginia's nine small towns below each carry an anchor that justifies the drive on its own. Abingdon has a state theater that started in 1933 by paying actors in produce, with a 35-mile rail-to-trail leaving from the same downtown. Smithfield gives its name to the salt-cured peanut-fed ham that still ships worldwide. Farmville holds the original Robert Russa Moton High School, where a 1951 student walkout helped reshape the law on school segregation. Front Royal opens onto Shenandoah National Park at Mile Zero of the Skyline Drive. The other towns on the list run from the Shenandoah Valley to the southwestern Tennessee line, and each one earns the weekend on its own.

Abingdon

Abingdon sits in Washington County in the southwestern corner of Virginia near the Tennessee line. The Barter Theatre, the State Theatre of Virginia, has produced live performances year-round since 1933, when Robert Porterfield reopened the building during the Depression and let audiences pay in produce (hence the name). The 35-mile Virginia Creeper Trail leaves from a trailhead two blocks off Main Street and runs east through Damascus to the Whitetop Station at the North Carolina line; the Whitetop end is at 3,576 feet, which means the ride back to Abingdon is mostly downhill. The Arts Depot, a working artists' co-op in the restored Norfolk and Western depot, runs studio tours on the first Friday of each month.

Staunton

Staunton is the seat of Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley and the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president. The American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse on East Market Street is the only re-creation of Shakespeare's indoor Jacobean theater in the world, modeled on the original Blackfriars in London. The downtown is one of the most intact 19th-century railroad-era cores in the eastern United States, with five National Register historic districts inside the city limits. The Frontier Culture Museum on the southern edge of town runs reconstructed working farms from West Africa, England, Germany, and Ireland alongside an evolving American farm to show how the Shenandoah Valley was settled.

Lexington

Lexington is home to two universities (Washington and Lee, founded in 1749, and the Virginia Military Institute, founded in 1839) and the burial places of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, both at sites in town. The Stonewall Jackson House on East Washington Street is the only home Jackson ever owned. The George C. Marshall Foundation on the VMI parade ground covers the career of the General of the Army and Secretary of State who designed the postwar European recovery program. Natural Bridge State Park sits 14 miles south and protects a 215-foot limestone arch that George Washington surveyed in 1750 and Thomas Jefferson later bought. The Virginia Horse Center on the north side of Lexington runs more than 100 horse shows and clinics a year.

Buchanan

Buchanan sits on the James River in Botetourt County, with the Blue Ridge Parkway less than five miles east at the Peaks of Otter. The town's signature feature is the Buchanan Swinging Bridge, a 366-foot pedestrian suspension bridge built in 1938 to replace earlier bridges repeatedly washed out by floods; it crosses the James and connects the historic downtown to Lowe Street on the north bank. The Buchanan Theatre on Main Street is a community-run movie house that opened in 1936 and still runs first-run films and live music. The town's Mountain Magic Festival, held the second Saturday in October, runs a full day of bluegrass on the courthouse lawn.

Front Royal

Front Royal is the seat of Warren County and the northern entrance to Shenandoah National Park, with the Skyline Drive starting at the south edge of town. The town calls itself the Canoe Capital of Virginia for its position at the confluence of the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River; several outfitters run float trips downtown. Skyline Caverns on US-340 has rare anthodite formations (white aragonite spikes) that are uncommon in any commercial cave. The Belle Boyd Cottage on Chester Street covers the Confederate spy Belle Boyd, who lived in town during the Civil War and gathered intelligence she passed to Stonewall Jackson before the 1862 Battle of Front Royal.

Smithfield

Smithfield sits on the Pagan River in Isle of Wight County and gives its name to Smithfield ham, the salt-cured, dry-aged ham from peanut-fed hogs that the town has been producing since the 18th century. Virginia state law restricts the Smithfield label to hams cured within town limits. The Isle of Wight County Museum on Main Street runs an exhibit on the ham industry, plus the world's oldest edible cured ham (cured in 1902 and still on display). St. Luke's Historic Church about four miles south is one of the oldest church buildings in the country, with parts of the structure dating to the 1680s. Windsor Castle Park covers about 200 acres on the river at the edge of downtown with paddleboard launches and trails.

Warrenton

Warrenton is the seat of Fauquier County in Virginia's hunt country, about 50 miles southwest of Washington, DC. The county is one of the highest-grossing horse and cattle counties in the state, and the Warrenton Horse Show, running since 1899, is one of the oldest continuously held horse shows in the country. The Old Jail Museum at Courthouse Square covers the county's 18th- and 19th-century history inside the original 1808 jail. Old Town runs about ten blocks of independent shops, antique stores, and restaurants. The county also holds about a dozen working wineries, including Pearmund Cellars and Three Fox Vineyards on the west side of US-29.

Wytheville

Wytheville sits in Wythe County at the intersection of Interstates 77 and 81 in southwestern Virginia, an important commercial crossroads since the original 19th-century turnpikes followed the same routes. The Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace Museum on East Main Street covers Edith Bolling Wilson, the Wytheville-born wife of Woodrow Wilson, who effectively ran the executive branch after his 1919 stroke; the Bolling Wilson Hotel across the street is a boutique hotel built in the 1927 George Wythe Hotel building. The Thomas J. Boyd Museum runs exhibits on the local 1950 polio epidemic, which closed the town to outsiders for months. Big Walker Lookout, ten miles north on US-52, runs a 100-foot tower with a long view across the Appalachian ridges.

Farmville

Farmville is home to Longwood University, founded in 1839 and the third-oldest public university in Virginia, plus Hampden-Sydney College about seven miles south. The Robert Russa Moton Museum on Griffin Boulevard is the original Moton High School, where on April 23, 1951, sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns led a student walkout protesting unequal facilities; the resulting case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, became one of the five cases consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education. The High Bridge Trail State Park is a 31-mile rail-to-trail running through Farmville, with its 2,400-foot, 125-foot-high High Bridge crossing the Appomattox River about four miles east of town. Green Front Furniture downtown occupies twelve former tobacco warehouses and is one of the largest furniture retailers on the East Coast.

The nine towns above span the state from the southwestern Tennessee border to the Northern Virginia hunt country, with each one anchored by something specific: a state theater, a Shakespearean playhouse, a swinging bridge, a salt-cured ham, a high-school walkout that helped end school segregation. Pick the one whose anchor matches the weekend.