Growing up in Timberville, Va, I’ve always had an affinity for Rockingham County and its beautiful scenery.  Near the end of my high school education at Broadway High School I started to realize that we learned about various places scattered all over the world, but the one thing that they failed to teach us is about the area in which we were all living.  Given this exclusive opportunity to analyze a specific place in Virginia, it comes at no surprise that I chose Rockingham County, Va.

Starting with the physical characteristics of the county, the most notable feature is that it is tucked entirely within the Valley and Ridge Province in the Shenandoah Valley (see Image 2).  This valley is given the designation for a good reason: on the right of the valley lies the Blue Ridge Mountains and on the left side of the valley lies the Appalachian Mountains.  Such a configuration creates a trough which in turn creates a rainshadow effect, restricting Rockingham County to be one of the driest counties in Virginia (see Image 3).  Along with these bordering mountains, Rockingham County also has the Massanutten Mountains cutting through the Eastern Central part of the county, almost creating a smaller valley inside the bigger Shenandoah Valley (see Figure 1).

As for the overall topography of the area, the valleys lies at around 1200 feet above sea level and the mountains highest points lie anywhere from 3200 to 4000 feet above sea level.  The Appalachian Mountain portion, the largest portion of mountains in the county, also happens to be the highest.  Coming in at 4000 feet, Flagpole Knob, located near the West Virginia and Augusta County border, is the highest point in Rockingham County (see Image 4).  The Blue Ridge Mountains are the second highest mountain range in Rockingham County coming in at 3600 feet at a mountain just east of Skyline Drive and Bald Face Mountain (see Image 6).  The Massanutten Mountains, the smallest portion of mountains in Rockingham County, is the smallest range of mountains with Laird Knob reaching 3200 feet (see Image 5).  Despite the high points of each mountain range, each of the three mountain chains are very gentle and similar in topography.  Each of them have an average height at around 2000 feet, with the higher points to the east and west of each of the ranges.

With such vast topography changes in such short distances, one might ponder exactly why such a configuration has happened where it did, and we can find the answer to that question lying under the soil in the rocks of Rockingham County.  For both the Massanutten and Appalachian Mountains, the mountains have managed to survive millions of years of intense erosion by being capped with a rather erosion resistant layer of sandstone strata.¹ As for the much older Blue Ridge Mountains the east, they have survived by being composed mainly from volcanic granite and other various metamorphic formations, some of the hardest and most resistant rocks in the world.² With the mountains being fairly resistant to erosion, one could take a guess that the valley of Rockingham County is made of something less resistant, and they would be exactly right.  The valley is covered almost exclusively with shale and limestone, with limestone being the worse of the two.  Rockingham County happens to have a valley floor composed primarily of a 10,000 foot thick layer of limestone which rapidly erodes on contact with acidic water, causing the valley to be carved out at a much higher rate than the surrounding mountains.¹

This limestone not only serves its purpose in allowing the valley to be carved out, but it also allows many areas of Rockingham County to have a karst topography (see Image 7).  Since the limestone is easily eroded, it allows pockets of limestone underground to be deteriorated to the point that it becomes a cave.  In the case of Rockingham County, many of the caves give under the stresses of gravity, creating sinkholes.  As you can see in Image 8, much of the valley floor in Rockingham County is covered in red dots, representing sinkholes.³  Those caves that do stay standing are mostly hidden and unknown to the public, but a few get turned into show caves and are stamped with the branding of a “cavern” much like we see today in the Endless Caverns just off Route 11.¹
Connected to these vast underground cave structures is the water that causes their existence in the first place.  As an entirety, Rockingham County is noted as being in the Potomac River watershed, but that can be further split into the North Fork and South Fork of the Shenandoah River watershed (see Image 9).⁴  This means that all water dropping in Rockingham County will eventually make it to the Potomac River and into the Chesapeake Bay.  As you can see from the watershed subunits, the two main rivers cutting through Rockingham County are the North and South Fork of the Shenandoah River.  The North Fork of the Shenandoah River actually originates in Rockingham County in the Appalachian Mountains near Bergton.  From there, it cuts east out of the mountains and into the valley where it then goes north parallel to the Massanutten Mountains on its western side (see Figure 2).  The South Fork of the Shenandoah River does not originate in Rockingham County, instead, it follows the southern political county boundary before making a sharp turn north, running parallel to the Massanutten Mountains on its eastern edge (see Figure 3).

Moving to the evolution of the cultural patterns in Rockingham County, the county first had its beginnings in or around 1670.  At this time, John Lederer, a monk of German decent, made his way from Jamestown, eventually entering into the valley and what would later be known as Rockingham County.  He was said to be marking out an area that his fellow countrymen would later inhabit in the coming years.  His fellow European countrymen wouldn’t make it to the valley until 1722, when German and Scotch-Irish settlers started migrating down the Great Valley from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.  Once the northerners started migrating into the valley, they found lush farmlands as well as bargain acreage prices.  Equal 100 acre parcels of land would go for six or seven pounds cheaper in the Shenandoah Valley than in Pennsylvania and other northern states.  It is my belief that these prices, linked with the difficulties of crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains, allowed for the European migrations down the Great Valley to dominate the English migrations from eastern Virginia.  This migration line would then lead to the development of Rockingham County into what we have today: a predominately German, Irish, and Scotch-Irish ancestral population.⁸

Moving to future predictions for the area over the next 20 to 100 years, I predict that the county could grow to a population of 85,000 in 20 years and to 150,000 within the next 100 years (see Chart 3).  These predictions are based upon the growth trends for the county, which can be broken up into separate eras.  Between 1790 and 1910, the population growth follows a very linear pattern (see Chart 2), whereas from 1920 to 2010 the growth follows a more exponential curve (see Chart 3).  Taking the most recent pattern as the future trend, we can gather a good indicator for future population predictions.  This new population will more than likely continue to follow past trends of population density as seen in Image 10 and 11.⁹  This means that the population will more than likely continue to follow the densest belts through central and eastern Rockingham County, all but avoiding the areas of the Appalachian, Massanutten, and Blue Ridge Mountains. Over time, much like we see in the images above, the less dense parts of the valley, excluding the mountains, will continue to become more dense until the entire valley is of medium to high density.  This is the exact plan that the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors came up with in 2006, titled the Comprehensive Plan 2006 Review.  Their general plan is to continue the outward residential and commercial sprawl of many areas of the county including Timberville, Broadway, Grottoes, Massanutten, and the outer lying brim of the Harrisonburg City limits.¹⁰

Endnotes

¹ Sherwood, W. Cullen. “A BRIEF GEOLOGIC HISTORY OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY.” Dept. of Geology and Environmental Studies. James Madison University. Web. 09 Oct. 2011. <http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/vageol/outreach/fieldtrips/rockingham/whole.html>

² Topinka, Lyn. “America’s Volcanic Past.” USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO). U.S. Geological Survey, 20 May 2003. Web. 09 Oct. 2011. <http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/VolcanicPast/Places/volcanic_past_appalachians.html>.

³ United States. Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Conservation and Economic Development. Division of Mineral Resources. Selected Karst Features of The Northern Valley and Ridge Province, Virginia. By David A. Hubbard. Division of Mineral Resources. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.dmme.virginia.gov/commercedocs/PUB_44.pdf>.

⁴ “Virginia Watersheds.” Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Web. 10 Oct. 2011. <http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/education/sol/watersheds.asp>.

⁵ “USA Counties.” Censtats Database. U.S. Census Bureau. Web. 11 Oct. 2011. <http://censtats.census.gov/cgi-bin/usac/usatable.pl>.

⁶ “Historical Census Browser.” University of Virginia Library. University of Virginia. Web. 11 Oct. 2011. <http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/>.

⁷ Wayland, John Walter. A History of Rockingham County, Virginia. Dayton, VA: Ruebush-Elkins, 1912. Print.

⁸ “Rockingham County, Virginia – Ancestry & Family History.” City & County Information, Town & Community Information – EPodunk. EPodunk. Web. 11 Oct. 2011. <http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genealogyInfo.php?locIndex=22951>.

⁹ “Rockingham County Population Density Map.” Virginia Department Of Forestry. Virginia Department of Forestry, 18 May 2006. Web. 11 Oct. 2011. <http://www.dof.virginia.gov/regCentral/rkh-info-pop-map.shtml>.

¹⁰ “Comprehensive Plan Contents.” Rockingham County, Virginia. Rockingham County, 28 Feb. 2007. Web. 11 Oct. 2011. <http://www.rockinghamcountyva.gov/showpage.aspx?PageID=237>.

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