Castlewood, VA

Castlewood is a Russell County CDP on the Clinch River in far Southwest Virginia, and the name reaches back to Jacob Castle, a frontier settler whose land was called Castle's Woods. The story then layers in a historic district, the first courthouse area, coal, railroads, and the river valley. Castlewood was briefly an incorporated town from 1991 to 1997 before returning to unincorporated status, which is a particularly Virginia kind of footnote. The Castlerun Historic District and Mason-Dorton School preserve pieces of the older community. Castlewood is Appalachian map-reading in one place: a family name, a river, a courthouse history, and a place that changed its municipal status without changing its address.