Old Rag Mountain: One Billion Years of Granite

Old Rag sits just east of the main crest of the Blue Ridge, and it looks different from every other peak in the park because it is different. The summit is bare granite, worn into domes and boulders and narrow squeeze-throughs that have made this the most popular hike in Shenandoah National Park.

The rock underfoot is Old Rag Granite, which crystallized about a billion years ago during the Grenville mountain-building event. The Blue Ridge that exists today formed much later, when the ancient granite was thrust westward and upward over younger limestone. What hikers scramble across near the three-thousand-two-hundred-eighty-four-foot summit is some of the oldest exposed rock in the park. The name is usually explained by the ragged, broken skyline the granite mass cuts against the horizon. The park acquired the private parcels that included Old Rag through a combination of purchase, donation, and eminent domain, the same contentious process that displaced mountain families across the entire park in the nineteen thirties.

Most hikers tackle the nine-mile circuit from the base, which climbs the Ridge Trail about one and a half miles to a false summit and then works through a little over a mile of rock scramble to the true top, before dropping down the Saddle Trail and Weakley Hollow Fire Road. The peak stands near Sperryville, in Madison County. From March first through November thirtieth, each hiker needs a day-use ticket on top of the park entrance fee, a rule meant to ease crowding and protect the mountain.