The Blue Ridge Section,
For two thirds of its length of 310 miles, is embraced in the Valley and
Piedmont counties that have their common lines upon its watershed; it is
only the southwestern portion of it, where it expands into a plateau, with
an area of some 1,230 square miles, that forms a separate political division;
still the whole range and its numerous spurs, parallel ridges, detached
knobs and foot hills, varying in width from 3 to 20 miles, embracing nearly
2,500 square miles of territory, is a distinct region, not only in appearance
but in all essential particulars. The river, in the gorge where the Potomac
breaks through the Blue Ridge, is 242 feet above tide. The Blue Ridge
there attains an elevation of 1,460 feet. Mt. Marshall, near and south of
Front Royal, is 3,369 feet high; the notch, Rockfish Gap, at the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railroad, is 1,996 feet, and James River, where it passes
through the Ridge, is 706 feet above tide, or more than twice as high as
the Potomac at its passage. The Peaks of Otter, in Bedford County, are
3,993 feet, and the Balsam Mountain, in Grayson, is 5,700 feet, and in
North Carolina this range is nearly 7,000 feet above the sea level. These
figures show that this range increases in elevation as we go southwest, and
every portion of the country near rises in the same manner. At a little
distance this range is generally of a deep blue color. The whole mountain
range may be characterized as a series of swelling domes, connected by
long ridges meeting between the high points in gaps or notches, and sending
out long spurs in all directions from the general range, but more
especially on the eastern side, these in turn sending out other spurs, giving
a great development of surface and variety of exposure.
The political division upon the plateau of the Blue Ridge is the
counties of Floyd, Carroll and Grayson, all watered by the Kanawha, or
New River, and its branches, a tributary of the Ohio, except the little valley
in the southwest corner of Grayson, which sends its waters to the Tennessee.
The population of this romantic section is 23 to the square mile.
