Visible at great distances, Whitetop Mountain was known in colonial times as Meadow Mountain. With a climate similar to southern Canada, it is Virginia’s second highest peak, and Mount Rogers, the state’s highest peak, stands immediately adjacent. The Whitetop community hosts three annual festivals: the Mountain Maple Festival, the Sorghum Molasses Festival, and the Ramp Festival, devoted to eating the odoriferous ramp, a form of wild garlic. The region is also a favorite place for outdoor recreation, with numerous trails for horseback riders, mountain bikers, and hikers, including the Appalachian Trail, while Whitetop’s summit is accessible by automobile and offers scenic views and picnic settings. The area also has a tradition of making musical instruments, and Albert Hash made elaborately carved violins and other instruments from native woods. Red spruce growing at the mountain peaks is prized as tone wood for violins, guitars, and other fretted instruments. Hash inspired both musicians and craftspeople and created a program in string band instruction at Mount Rogers School, Virginia’s smallest high school. Other noted historic musicians from the Whitetop area include Harold Hensley, Speedy Tolliver, and Jont Blevins. In the 1930s, the historic Whitetop Folk Festival drew large audiences, national publicity, and First Lady Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who came to see singers of old ballads, flat foot dancers, and musicians including fiddlers, banjo players, and lap dulcimer players. Whitetop also lies along the Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, part of a historically isolated southwest Virginia region that preserved a strong musical legacy by passing traditions down through musical families to an appreciative community, where old time mountain music, bluegrass, and gospel continue through venues, festivals, concerts, radio shows, jam sessions, and museums.