Portal:Virginia

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Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. It borders Kentucky to the west, Tennessee to the south-west, North Carolina to the south, West Virginia to the north-west, and Maryland to the north. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach. With a population of 8.8 million, it is the 12th-most populous and 15th-most densely populated state. More than one-third of Virginia's population lives in Northern Virginia, which includes the most populous jurisdiction in the state, Fairfax County.

Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Central Virginia lies predominantly in the Piedmont, the foothill region of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval base. (Full article...)

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The Appalachian National Scenic Trail, generally known as the Appalachian Trail or simply the A.T., is a marked hiking trail in the eastern United States extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail passes through the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The precise length of the trail changes over time as trails are modified or added. The total length is approximately 2,200 miles (3,500 km). The path is maintained by 30 trail clubs and multiple partnerships, and managed by the National Park Service and the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy. The majority of the trail is in wilderness, although some portions traverse towns, roads and cross rivers.

The Appalachian Trail is famous for its many hikers, some of whom, called thru-hikers, attempt to hike it in its entirety in a single season. Many books, memoirs, web sites and fan organizations are dedicated to this pursuit.

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John Warfield Johnston (1818 – 1889) was an American lawyer and politician from Abingdon, Virginia. He served in the Virginia State Senate, and represented Virginia in the United States Senate when the state was readmitted after the American Civil War. He was United States Senator for thirteen years; in national politics, he was a Democrat.

Johnston had been ineligible to serve in Congress because of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade anyone from holding public office who had sworn allegiance to the United States and subsequently sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. However, his restrictions were removed at the suggestion of the Freedmen's Bureau when he aided a sick and dying former slave after the War. He was the first person who had sided with the Confederacy to serve in the United States Senate.

He was caught in the middle during the debate over the Arlington Memorial. Johnston was an outspoken opponent of the Texas-Pacific Bill, a sectional struggle for control of railroads in the South, which figured in the Compromise of 1877. He was also an outspoken Funder during Virginia's heated debate as to how much of its pre-War debt the state ought to have been obliged to pay back. The controversy culminated in the formation of Readjuster Party and the appointment of William Mahone as its leader; this marked the end of Johnston's career in the Senate.

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This month in Virginia history

September 11, 2001: Flight 77 is steered into the Pentagon Building in Arlington, Virginia, killing 189, as part of the September 11 attacks.
September 19, 1676: The capital city of Jamestown is burnt to the ground during Bacon's Rebellion, by rebels under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon
September 24, 1960: USS Enterprise (pictured), the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is christened and launched at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard.
September 27, 1903: The Wreck of the Old 97 occurs while the train near Danville, and is later immortalized by a popular ballad.

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Credit: James F. Gibson (1862)

Union Army battery of 10-inch Seacoast mortars at Yorktown for the Siege of Yorktown

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... that Chandler Court and Pollard Park, which were designed and occupied by William & Mary faculty, have been called "two of Williamsburg's most appealing twentieth-century neighborhoods"?
... that illustrator Abigail Larson once designed a wine-bottle label for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum?
... that a Virginia TV station broadcast an all-Black variety show on its first day in 1950?
... that John F. Kennedy's pollster found many West Virginia voters concerned that a Pope in the White House would arrive by transatlantic tunnel?
... that announcers at a Virginia radio station were warned that playing more than three rap songs an hour could get them fired?
... that bricks laid in Flemish bond were a sign of wealth in colonial Virginia?