Remote Southwestern Virginia

Recently I posted an entry about a section of Virginia that is further west than any point in West Virginia. It’s an odd fact made quite interesting primarily because the founders of a state carved from an older one consciously chose to highlight the word “west” in describing their creation. At the same time it also points out another situation albeit indirectly, that the far southwestern corner of Virginia is incredibly remote from the remainder of the state. What is sometimes overlooked is that Virginia’s southern border stretches an amazing 430+ miles from False Cape on the Atlantic Ocean all the way westward to the Cumberland Gap where Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky come together at a single point. I’ve often heard that this distant corner of Virginia is closer to eight state capitals than it is to its own capital in Richmond. Let’s find out if that’s true.

View Larger Map
I chose Pennington Gap, the largest town in Lee County that forms the triangle at Virginia’s southwestern corner, as a starting point for this analysis. I could have chosen several places even further west in Lee County but this seemed to be the most significant place of settlement. I then plotted straight lines connecting Pennington Gap to the tip of the Capitol building dome in eight nearby states plus Virginia. The red line to Richmond, capital of Virginia, is definitely the longest of the series and demonstrates the truth behind the old adage for air mileage. The relationship continues to hold for road distance as well, as detailed in the following table:

City	By Air	By Road
Atlanta, GA	222	305
Charleston, WV	134	189
Columbia, SC	221	278
Columbus, OH	228	293
Frankfort, KY	142	204
Indianapolis, IN	269	361
Nashville, TN	213	271
Raleigh, NC	254	321
Richmond, VA	313	383

So whether traveling by air or by road, the residents of Lee County, Virginia will have to go further to see their state representatives in Richmond than they would if they had been part of eight other nearby states.