Meadows of Dan: Where the Parkway Meets the Dan River

Meadows of Dan is an old mountain community in Patrick County, Virginia, where the Blue Ridge Parkway crosses U.S. Route Fifty-Eight. The name comes simply from the meadows along the headwaters of the Dan River, which begins its long journey to the sea right here on the plateau. The name is credited to James Steptoe Langhorne, one of the community's earliest English settlers.

Two landmarks anchor the community's history. Cockram's Mill, a grist mill built in the late eighteen hundreds, ground corn for families across the surrounding ridges and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The frame building is one hundred eleven feet long and stands beside a concrete dam on the headwaters of the Dan. The Mayberry Trading Post, a long-running general store, served as post office, supply depot, and social center for a community that had no other commercial outlet for miles in any direction. Today fewer than one hundred people live in this unincorporated community, but the crossroads where the Parkway meets the highway still draws drivers who come for the elevation, the meadows, and the unhurried pace that locals call simply the mountain. The Parkway crosses the highway here at milepost one hundred seventy-eight, at an elevation of about two thousand nine hundred fifty-six feet. Mayberry Presbyterian Church, also on the National Register, was the setting for the ministry of a mountain preacher named Bob Childress, whose life is told in the book The Man Who Moved a Mountain.