Montvale, VA

Montvale is a census-designated place in western Bedford County, set between Roanoke and Bedford along the Route 460/221 corridor. The 2020 census counted 635 residents. Montvale sits on the western side of the county's Blue Ridge foothills, with Bedford County Public Schools serving a community that includes Montvale Elementary, Liberty Middle, and Liberty High. The place has a useful in-between character: close to two larger towns, but surrounded by creek bottoms, fields, and wooded slopes.

Montvale Park gives that setting a public face. The 129-acre county park beside the elementary school has soccer fields, a picnic shelter, walking and biking trails, and wetland improvements along the South Branch of Goose Creek. Locust Level, a historic house and farm, was listed on the National Register in 1990. Montvale also carried a piece of the region's energy infrastructure: an oil terminal served the Colonial Pipeline for nearly six decades before the Montvale spur shut down in 2018 because repairs no longer made economic sense. Schools, the park, a historic farm, and an old pipeline corridor all meet in this Bedford County community.