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Return to the Virginia
Virginia's County
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Virginia allows its cities to "secede" from its surrounding county and form into a so-called "Independent City". There are forty such independent cities in Virginia, and the number varies a little bit as new cities form and some even dis-incorporate and re-merge with their county. There are a smattering of independent cities nationwise (e.g. Carson City NV, St. Louis MO, Baltimore MD, etc), but no state has quite the collection of independent cities that Virginia has. Why they do this, I can only guess. I would assume it's just a way to separate services and tax-base issues, probably something unsexy like that.
In some cases, the city was so large it dominated the surrounding county, and it made sense to simply dissolve the county and call it all "such-and-such" city. This is what they did with places like Newport News, Virginia Beach, Suffolk and the other cities surrounding the Hampton Roads. In other cases, the city is a small enclave of maybe one or two square miles surrounded on all sides by its county. And sometimes these independent cities are their surrounding county's seat, which is kind of odd since the city is supposed to be a separate entity from the county.
As for the county highpointing hobby: the independent cities count as "county-like civil subdivisions". We do them on a convenience basis. Sometimes they are interesting, but often they're not, but they help pad the count anyway. I have collected our independent city reports into this single page, presented in chronological order.
Winchester City is located in the far north of Virginia, just below the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Winchester is the largest city in this region (roughly 30,000 people, I'd say), and has all the modern amenities of big cities, including strip malls and heavy traffic. Today was the day after Thanksgiving and Beth and I needed to run into Winchester to do some quick errands before we spent our day bagging highpoints in the Shenandoah National Park. We got into town about 8:30 a.m. and the traffic was brutal, with thousands of shoppers clogging up all the open space. We did our errands and then got moving... to the highpoint.
We followed US-522, the city's main drag, north through the industrial parts of town, which advertises itself as the Apple Capital of the World. Eventually US-522 breaks into the open and curves northwesterly toward the freeway (VA-37). Just before the freeway we went south on Fox Drive, then right onto Margaret Drive, past some homes and up a lesser paved road as it bent around southerly past an apple orchard. The orchard was fallow, having just had its harvest. Beth and I got out and walked south through the open areas about 200 feet, crossing the city/county line somewhere therein. After a photo or two, we got moving, heading south to some highpoints in Shenandoah National Park.
The focus of today's adventure was a visit to the Manassas National Historic Battlefield from the Civil War. We were on our first day of our 2004 trip to Virginia and a bit jet-lagged; we didn't get moving from her folks' place until almost 2 p.m. The drive east toward Manassas is easy and takes less than an hour, but traffic can be horrible. It was. The Battlefield, on the other hand, was extremely interesting and worth the visit. We spent about three hours here taking in a guided walking tour. The docents explain the battle's history and contexts, and I learned a lot. It was nearing 5 p.m. when we left the Battlefield.
Afterwards, we decided to drive into the city of Manassas and get its highpoint, since it was only about 5 miles from the Battlefield. Traffic was a mess, but we followed the road directions from previous vistors and found Portner Drive with no difficulty. The highpoint was on and nearby the road, in a residential area and nearby an old-folks home. It's likely the natural highpoint was graded away long ago, but the relief was discernable to the eye.
The map shows only this area as the highpoint but the eye seems to indicate some areas south near the obvious water tower. We checked out these areas as well and could make no determination. Going back home we had to contend with late-day Washington D. C. traffic along Interstate-66. The highpoint was barely worth the time but the Battlefield was thoroughly interesting. We continued our trip west and into the Appalachian Mountains and on toward the Lexington area of the state.
After spending a few enjoyable hours driving the southern sections of the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, and visiting the Albemarle County highpoint along the way, we exited the park and made our way into the city of Staunton, where we had a hotel waiting for us. Its highpoint is a very distinct hill called Betsey Bell, with decent road access to near the very top. It's a city park, apparently. From US-11 and Betsey Bell Drive near a Burger King, we followed the drive up and into the trees. The road was in okay shape, but we had the tiniest passenger vehicle in the world so we played it safe and parked in a turnout short of the summit (the road goes virtually all the way up). We walked the final 0.2 mile to the picnic area that also features a lookout deck. The views were nice, but the immediate area was full of fast-food trash, cans and bottles and various stuff. We walked back to our car and drove to our hotel.
The city is pronounced "Stanton", as I was corrected many times by my I-lived-in-Virginia-a-long-time wife. The hotel in town was nice, and we ate at a nice old ma-and-pa diner with great pies. The next day we had a memorable and snakey hike up Great Northern Mountain in Augusta County.
Beth and I spent a couple days in and around Lexington, where she went to school at Washington and Lee University. Lexington is a nice, neat little town, with a well-preserved historical downtown full of cool shops and restaurants. We toured the campus, visited Robert E. Lee's burial site, and had a lunch in town. For Beth this was the first time in a long time she'd been back to her alma mater. We were also entertained by a 9-week old gray kitten at a bookstore. The store owner says the cat lives at the store. Being cat people, we naturally fell apart when we saw the fluff-ball.
After lunch and our visit with the kitty, we sought out the city's highpoint. It was easy to find, save for the maze of residential roads we had to follow. We got minorly lost once or twice but eventually found the highpoint, northwest of downtown along the city's boundary with surrounding Rockbridge County. The highpoint is a hill with a huge water tank built in a depression, and an old brick building at its apparent highest natural area. The map calls it a filtration plant. The gates were open so we just walked in, passing some workers building some sort of geodesic-type dome. No idea, me. We walked up to the brick building and around back, stepping on what to us seemed to be the highpoint. Good enough for us. We walked down and that was that. Later that night we went to a bluegrass concert at the nearby Theater at Lime Kilns, a converted quarry now made into an outdoor theater and popular, apparently for plays, too. Neat crowd: a mix of long-bearded hillbilly types and college professor types. Hey, I fit into both categories! The music was great.
Today's main goal was to drive from Richmond to Williamsburg - a trip that should take just a couple hours even with traffic. So we left a lot of time open to explore highpoints in and around Richmond, and those on the way toward Williamsburg. We stayed the night at a Super-8 in north Richmond, then got moving into Richmond proper. Being a saturday, we had less traffic than usual along Interstate-95. We were able to make pretty good time working our way to the south side of the James River following Route 150.
Richmond is Virginia's capital and another of its separate, independent cities. Its highpoints are two areas of 370 feet elevation in the community of Old Gun. We left Rte-150 and followed Huguenot Road west about a mile or so to Old Gun Road on our right. We were surprised to see the area was rather nice, up-scale homes on open properties. We were even more surprised to see a Mormon Church in the area. They're getting around, it seems. We used their parking lot to get out the maps and figure out what we wanted to do.
The first area was off of Duryea Road and onto a gravel road/driveway that passed one nice home and led up into the front of another home. We parked at a split in the road and walked a few dozen feet to a large, mature tree that seemed to sit on the highest ground. We spent maybe just a few minutes here. The other area sits astride Old Gun Road and for this one we just drove to its apex and stepped on the nearest high ground. Another one in the books. Our next goal was the Chesterfield County highpoints just up the road, but we gave up on them after awhile and went another few miles west into Powhatan County for its easy highpoint.
Williamsburg is steeped in American history. It was established not long after the original settlement at Jamestown was established in the mid-17th century, and for a time was the capital of the Virginia colony. Its colonial district has remained essentially unchanged and preserved (obviously, kept up to current codes), and is a popular tourist destination. Our plan was to spend three days in and around Williamsburg, with one day set aside to actually explore the colonial portion. The other days were spent driving around the bay and surrounding areas. We arrived late in the afternoon, coming in from Richmond, and battling some very heavy weekend traffic on Interstate-64. All we wanted was to seek out our hotel.
The road net around Williamsburg is very confusing. Naturally we got hopelessly lost, and ended up on an impromptu driving tour of the city, which was very pretty. Somehow we found the interstate again, about 4 miles from where we left it, so we backtracked to our exit and tried again. This time we zigged instead of zagged, and with a bit of luck and Beth's sharp eyes, we found our hotel. We showered, relaxed then set out for a dinner at a nearby Golden Corral. Very colonial.
We set out to explore the highpoint areas for after dinner. There are two such areas, both along the western city boundary and easily accessed by major roads, and both at or above an even 100 feet elevation. The first area we explored was where Ironbound Road leaves US-60, and near Blair High School and Kiwanis Park. We explored a number of neighborhood roads, only getting out when we felt one particular area was higher than the rest. We parked at the Kiwanis Park along Longhill Road and walked across the street near a portion of natural woods with a good rise to it - a probable natural highpoint. This area was beside a grassy area abutting a Spring Hill Suites hotel. To our eyes, these areas seemed to be the best bet for the large, sinuous northern region. We also explored the regions near the hospital along Ironbound Road and a nearby mini-mart.
For the southern area, we took the 191 bypass south toward the Mill Neck neighborhood area. A smaller area essentially tops out at the intersection of Mill Neck Road and Berkeley Lane. We did some quick tags and called it good. Total time on this mission: maybe an hour, including traffic and the various stops. Kind of fun; a good excuse to tour other parts of Williamsburg.
We started our day with a drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge onto the eastern peninsula part of Virginia (the Delmarva), where we visited the interesting sandy bluff highpoint of Northampton County north of Kiptopeke State Park. Back across the Bay Bridge and into the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area, we pretty much stayed on the freeways and took the Hampton Tunnel north back into Hampton. Hampton is one of the numerous large cities clumped on a number of peninsulas and necks in far southeast Virginia, collectively called the Hampton Roads. All of the cities herein are independent of any counties - they either seceded from or absorbed into whatever vestigial counties may have existed here way back when. On the peninsula that consists of Hampton, Newport News and the smaller city of Poquoson, I found an old map that seemed to indicate that at one time all three cities were part of Elizabeth City County. The map was from a long time ago - I have no idea when they all achieved independent city status and vanquished Elizabeth City County into history.
Back in Hampton we set out to explore the four somewhat scattered 'highpoints', all little blips of land that rise - so say the maps - to just above 30 feet elevation. Two of the four are located in a city-run woodlands park called Sandy Bottom, right off of Interstate-64. The other two are north in some housing tracts. We discovered real fast that there is no exit from I-64 to the Sandy Bottom Park, so we took the next one south at Hampton Roads Center Parkway, west onto Big Bethel Road, then north a tiny bit to the entrance into the park. We parked at the visitor's center lot.
The two areas in this park don't necessarily agree with the map, since the park is relatively new, but it is apparent that there are areas that rise above other areas. We walked a couple of the trails, one on the south side of the access road (forget the name) and another near a couple of the ponds. Even some areas near the parking lot looked like contenders - they had mature trees growing so they can't have been too 'artificial'. We spent maybe 30 minutes total walking some of the trails and generally hittiing what looked like good bets. I liked one rise just west of the visitor's center, along a gravel trail just before it entered into the trees. When we left I felt good we'd given the park a reasonable walk-through. The weather was pretty nasty (hot, humid) so we decided to reward ourselves with a lunch at a restaurant just across the way in the mall.
The other two areas were north on Big Bethel Road about a mile-plus, and both in neighborhoods - we visited both areas and tagged a tree at one - neither area seemed to have any significant relief and probably are not contenders for the highpoint. Ironically, a massive hill rises behind one such 'highpoint' - a landfill. We had no desire to claim that one. We did, however, spend part of our day at Fort Monroe on Hampton's southern tip. Beth lived here as a teen with her family. The Fort is still an active military base, and dates from pre-Civil War and is notable for its massive earthen battlements and moat. A museum exists within the rooms of the bulwarks, parts of which were an old jail - Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was imprisoned here for awhile. We scrambled up to the top of the bulwarks, which is a combination of massive brick and mortar construction and earth piled against it. Beth showed me where the teens on the base would go to sneak smokes and beer. Given that the ground here was literally at sea level, the tops of the earthen battlements were probably above 30 feet elevation. Unfortunately man-made highpoints don't count, but on the satisfaction-meter, hiking up onto these was far more satisfying than the bumps we encountered up the road. Newport News City highpoint was immediately next...
Beth and I had just visited the highpoints of Hampton City, plus some time on the Fort Monroe base, and we were heading back west on Interstate-64 back to Williamsburg. Along the way we planned to visit the easy, single-region highpoint of Newport News City.
We opted to stay off of the interstate and instead traveled along route VA-143, which parallels the interstate and passes through a mix of business and some undeveloped areas and woodland. In time we had come upon route VA-238, which we followed 'eastbound' (east according to the sign, northbound in reality). We went up a slight rise right onto Crafford Road, then left onto Taliaferro Drive, a simple dead-end road with some residential homes on it. The highpoint seems to be pretty much along the road and in some adjoining yards. We stepped out, looked around, then called it good. Our hotel and a nice shower was beckoning us in Williamsburg, the end of a nice enjoyable afternoon of highpoints and history!
The independent city of Poquoson is not to far up the road from this highpoint. Poquoson City has the honor of having the lowest elevation highpoints of any of the county or equivalents in the country. The highest land reaches no higher than a shade over 10 feet. However, these are spread out over many (as in 38) areas and we had no desire to find them, given our tiredness and the heat. For the truly dedicated, please refer to: me and me, too.
Coming soon
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(c) 2004-2008 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |