Natural Chimneys near Mount Solon in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is a dramatic limestone formation of seven freestanding towers, about 65 to 120 feet high, shaped over immense spans of time by groundwater dissolving rock along fractures. Formed from marine limestone roughly 500 million years ago when the region lay underwater, the site was later uplifted with the Appalachian Mountains and altered by a mafic magma intrusion. Its landscape includes caves such as Brown’s Cave and the Cave of the Wooden Steps, and it preserves evidence of Pleistocene wildlife. Today it is the centerpiece of Augusta County’s park and a setting for festivals and a jousting tradition dating to 1821.