Vesuvius: Fire and Iron in Rockbridge County

This quiet village along Route Fifty-Six got its dramatic name from a charcoal iron furnace built here in the early eighteen hundreds. Its founders named the operation after Mount Vesuvius, the famous Italian volcano, likely because of the fire and smoke that billowed day and night when the stack was in blast. The furnace drew on local iron ore, limestone, and endless cords of hardwood charcoal from the surrounding hills, producing pig iron until it shut down in the mid eighteen hundreds.

The Shenandoah Valley Railroad later arrived, giving the village a second act in mining and timber, and geologists later found rare phosphate minerals in Rockbridge County, including one species named rockbridgeite for the county. The furnace stack ruin still stands along the South River.