Narrows, VA

Narrows is a Giles County town where the New River squeezes through a mountain gap, which is the whole reason for the name. Settled around 1778, it grew along the Cumberland Gap Turnpike and became a transportation-and-industry town when the Norfolk & Western Railway arrived in 1882 and the Virginian Railway followed in the early 1900s. The Narrows Commercial Historic District keeps that route-based past in view, while the New River still runs through the center of the story. Narrows is southwest Virginia with a river, a gap, and a downtown built around both.