Spring Valley Rural Historic District

Spring Valley is a 4,220-acre farming district in the Blue Ridge Highlands of northeastern Grayson County, Virginia, bounded by Iron Mountain, Brierpatch Mountain and ridges that form the valley's watershed. Knob Fork Creek runs through fertile bottomlands, and the valley has remained agricultural since European settlement in the mid-1700s. Its buildings include early log houses, frame I-houses, brick dwellings such as the ca. 1860 O'Donnell Place, and Queen Anne farmhouses from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Cattle farmsteads with barns, granaries, meathouses and springhouses dominate the landscape. Community buildings include Ebenezer Methodist Church, the Spring Valley Academy school and the T.C. Vaughan store, which also housed the post office. Economic decline in the 1930s slowed building, so later non-contributing resources are mostly one-story brick Ranch houses. Conservation easements protect the core of the district, where several working farms remain on original land grants held by the same families. The district was listed for its agricultural and architectural character.