Southwest Virginia town at the I-77 and I-81 junction, named for signer George Wythe.
Wytheville is a small town in the Blue Ridge Highlands of southwest Virginia, sitting at the junction of Interstates 77 and 81 — which makes it one of the most passed-through towns in the state. Most travelers stop for gas; the smarter ones stop for longer.
Named after George Wythe, Virginia's first law professor and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the town punches above its weight historically. It became notorious during the Civil War as a Confederate supply depot and suffered a Union cavalry raid in 1863. More recently, it made the national news twice in odd ways: a wave of UFO sightings in the late 1980s that ended up on Unsolved Mysteries, and a post office hostage crisis in December 2009.
The main annual event is the Chautauqua Festival, held the third weekend of June since 1985. It draws live music, hot air balloons, magic acts, and craft vendors to Elizabeth Brown Memorial Park — a genuine community event, not a tourist production. The town's name, incidentally, is pronounced "WITH-vill."
Guide
Getting There
Wytheville sits precisely at the junction of I-77 and I-81, which makes it one of the most easily reached small towns in Virginia — and explains why so many interstate travelers stop here. By car from Roanoke it's about 90 minutes southwest on I-81; from Charlotte, North Carolina it's 2.5 hours north on I-77; from Washington DC it's approximately 4 hours southwest, again on I-81. The town is a natural midpoint on several common routes through the southern Appalachians.
There is no Amtrak service to Wytheville, and the nearest commercial airport of any size is Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional (ROA), about 90 minutes away. This is, straightforwardly, a road-trip destination. The interstate access is so direct that the town functions partly as a rest and fuel stop for long-distance drivers — but there's enough to see for an overnight or a focused half-day if you plan it. The downtown is compact enough that you can park once and cover everything on foot.
