Big Stone Gap, VA

Big Stone Gap is a small mountain town of roughly 5,000 residents in Wise County, in the far southwestern corner of Virginia, nestled in the Appalachian highlands along the border with Kentucky and Tennessee. The town has the friendly, unhurried character of a former coal-camp community that has reinvented itself as a heritage tourism destination, and it serves as a natural gateway to the broader "Heart of Appalachia" region. Its literary and film fame comes from Adriana Trigiani's novel Big Stone Gap and the 2014 movie of the same name, both of which celebrate the area's Italian-American heritage and small-town Appalachian culture. The nearest major city is Knoxville, Tennessee, about a hundred miles to the south along Interstate 75, while Roanoke, Virginia lies roughly 150 miles to the northeast.

The Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park sits within Big Stone Gap itself, housed in the elegant 1890s mansion known as the Slemp House. Visitors can tour period rooms and rotating exhibits that trace the cultural and industrial history of the coalfield region, making it a convenient rainy-day stop right in town. The museum is a Virginia state park and can be explored on the official site at Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park.

A short drive northwest of town, Natural Tunnel State Park is one of the area's marquee attractions. The park wraps around a massive limestone cave-through which the aptly named Stock Creek has carved a passage large enough to be called "the Eighth Natural Wonder of the World" by early promoters, and visitors can ride a chairlift down to its base. The drive from Big Stone Gap is roughly fifteen to twenty minutes, and the park is documented on its Wikipedia page at Natural Tunnel State Park.

Roughly forty minutes to the north, the Breaks Interstate Park straddles the Virginia-Kentucky line and is often promoted as the "Grand Canyon of the South." The park centers on a five-mile-long, 1,600-foot-deep gorge cut by the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River, with overlooks, a seasonal aerial adventure course, hiking trails, and a lodge. More information is available on the park's Wikipedia entry at Breaks Interstate Park.

Back in town, the June Toliver Park complex and the surrounding downtown host the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, an outdoor drama staged in a stone amphitheater each summer since 1964, which dramatizes John Fox Jr.'s turn-of-the-century novel set in the surrounding mountains. Combined with the nearby Jefferson National Forest and the countless overlooks along the High Knob and Mount Rogers country, Big Stone Gap offers short-term rental guests a base that pairs small-town charm, literary pedigree, and easy access to some of the most dramatic scenery in the southern Appalachians.