Powell Valley in southwest Virginia, in the United States, is located near the city of Norton and the town of Big Stone Gap in Wise County, Virginia.
Powell Valley is a picturesque location, with an overlook accessible from the Northbound lanes of U.S. Route 23. A number of homes, farms, and a church are located in the valley below the overlook.
The valley begins between Powell Mountain and Little Stone Mountain where the waters of the Powell River flow down from the rugged mountains of western Wise County. The immense exposed rock face where Stone Mountain and Powell Mountain come together near Grindstone Ridge to the southeast from the overlook, yields a striking visual change in altitude. Within only 0.8 mile the vertical elevation changes by 2,000 feet ( 610 meters ) across the northern face of the Grindstone Ridge Dome of the High Knob Massif, to mark one of the greatest short-distance vertical elevation changes in the southern Appalachians ( the greatest found west of the Blue Ridge in Virginia ).
The valley follows the Powell River west towards the Tennessee border.
Majestic Powell Valley is part of the High Knob Landform, lying literally amid its heart and eroded core, and is a true geologic wonder.
The Virginia longhunter, explorer and later Revolutionary War general Joseph Martin was instrumental in opening up Powell Valley to settlement from the east.
Famous quotes containing the words powell and/or valley:
“I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one’s own vomit.”
—J. Enoch Powell (b. 1912)
“Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)