Fort Chiswell, VA

Fort Chiswell is a census-designated place in Wythe County where Interstates 77 and 81 meet. The junction produces a rare double wrong-way concurrency: for a short stretch, northbound I-77 shares pavement with southbound I-81, so the highway numbers seem to point opposite the direction a driver expects. The interchange puts the community at a major crossroads between the New River valley, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. The unusual geometry also makes Fort Chiswell a familiar waypoint for long-distance travel through the county.

The name reaches back to a frontier fort built in 1758 during the French and Indian War. During the American Revolution, the post guarded a nearby lead deposit used to make bullets and stood near the meeting point of the Great Trading Path and Richmond Road, close to the New River. Today, Fort Chiswell's local reference points include the combined Fort Chiswell Middle and High School building and the surrounding river landscape. Archaeological work connected to I-77 also found evidence of prehistoric occupation and several periods of eighteenth-century settlement.