Greater Newport Rural Historic District

Greater Newport Rural Historic District spans about 21,085 acres in Giles County, Virginia, taking in the valleys of Sinking Creek, Spruce Run, Clover Hollow, Plowscrew and Mountain Lake, all draining toward the New River. Roughly 60 percent of the land is forested and 35 percent is farmland, much of it used for grazing and for hay and corn. The district holds hundreds of contributing resources, chiefly farmsteads with wood-frame houses on fieldstone foundations and utilitarian barns, springhouses and sheds. Dwellings progress from late-eighteenth-century log cabins to Greek Revival, Italianate and Queen Anne houses, with some Sears-type and bungalow homes of the early twentieth century. The district also includes one-room schools, simple churches, gristmills, a textile mill, three covered bridges and the stone Reynolds or Dowdy Iron Furnace. Its agricultural landscape, shaped by limestone soils and mountain boundaries, has kept its historic character, and that continuity supports its listing for historical patterns and architecture.