Dickenson County

Dickenson County developed a distinctive traditional music shaped by tones from Primitive Baptist and Dunkard churches, a sound that influenced regional string-band singers and found its most famous expression in Ralph Stanley. With his brother Carter, Ralph Stanley formed a band in 1946 that drew worldwide attention to Virginia’s coalfields and nearby areas as the Stanley Brothers and their Clinch Mountain Boys toured nationally and made notable recordings. After Carter’s death in 1966, Ralph Stanley continued the band and received many honors, including a National Heritage Fellowship and the America’s Medal for the Arts, presented by President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006. In Clintwood, the Ralph Stanley Museum and Traditional Mountain Music Center preserves information about the region’s music and the brothers’ boyhood. The county and nearby area also host major musical gatherings, including the annual Tri-State Singing Convention at Breaks Interstate Park on Labor Day and the Ralph Stanley Festival on Memorial Day weekend at the Hills of Home Park between McClure and Coeburn, which draws visitors from around the world, bluegrass bands, and performers associated with Stanley’s groups. Four rivers, the Pound, Cranesnest, Russell Fork, and McClure, rise in and near Dickenson County, join together, and break through Pine Mountain in whitewater that gave Breaks Interstate Park its name and attracts rafters and kayakers. John W. Flanagan Dam and Reservoir is another valued natural resource for swimming, boating, fishing, and the purity of its water. Dickenson County also lies along the Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, in a historically isolated region where old-time mountain music, bluegrass, and gospel were preserved through musical families, venues, makers of fretted instruments, museums, festivals, concerts, radio shows, and jam sessions.

Virginia · United States