Fort Chiswell, Virginia

At what is now the interchange of Interstate Seventy-Seven and Interstate Eighty-One in Wythe County, Virginia, a lead mine once shaped the outcome of the Revolutionary War. Colonel John Chiswell discovered the deposits in the late seventeen fifties, and once Virginia declared independence the state ran the mines as an important lead supply for the Patriot cause. Lead for musket balls came out of this Virginia hillside. A frontier fort built here in seventeen fifty-eight gave the crossroads its name, and Fort Chiswell remains on the map today where those two great interstates meet.