Austinville, Virginia

Austinville holds a claim few communities in America can match. Colonel John Chiswell first found lead along the New River here in seventeen fifty-six, and the mines that opened on that discovery became the longest-running lead operation in United States history, producing continuously from the seventeen fifties until nineteen eighty-one. During the Revolution, Patriot forces drew on these mines for musket balls and shot, and Tory raiders tried and failed to seize them in seventeen eighty.

In seventeen eighty-nine, Moses Austin and his brother took over the mines on contract, and when the Virginia venture collapsed under debt, Moses turned to lead mining in Missouri. His son, Stephen Fuller Austin, was born here in seventeen ninety-three and would go on to colonize Texas and become known as the Father of Texas. A lead mine on the New River is where that story began.