Local Communities

Woodlawn, Virginia

A farming community on US-58 between Fancy Gap and Galax — and the site of the first school in the United States to teach vocational agriculture under federal law.

Woodlawn is farming country, spread across the gentle open land where US-58 and US-221 run together as Carrollton Pike, about ten miles northwest of Fancy Gap. It's less a town than a whole countryside of one — farms and roadside homes scattered across the plateau with no real center, and more people living out here than the quiet of it would lead you to guess.

The land is easier here than in the ridges around Fancy Gap — wider valleys, longer fields, the kind of productive pasture and cropland that has carried Carroll County's economy for two centuries. It's about the gentlest farming ground in this corner of the county, and it has been worked a long time.

At a Glance

  • Distance from Fancy Gap

    About 10 miles northwest via US-58. Roughly a 20-minute drive.

  • Highway

    US-58 and US-221, running concurrently as Carrollton Pike. I-77 Exit 14 is a few miles east.

  • County

    Carroll County, Virginia

  • Elevation

    About 2,570 feet, on the plateau.

  • Population

    2,045 at the 2020 Census, across a designated area of about 19.5 square miles.

  • ZIP code

    24381, with an active post office.

Woodlawn School

Woodlawn has the best-documented history of the small communities around Fancy Gap, and it rests on its school.

The claim that put Woodlawn in the history books dates to 1917. That year Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act, the first federal law to fund vocational education in public schools, and Carroll County's superintendent moved fast enough to secure the new money that Woodlawn became the first school in the whole country to teach vocational agriculture under it. In a farming community, teaching farming was the whole point.

The school itself was already old by then. It opened in 1878 as the Woodlawn Male and Female Academy, spent a stretch as a normal institute training teachers, and under Virginia's 1906 high-school law grew into Carroll County's first public high school. The oldest building still standing went up in 1908, with wings added on through most of the century that followed, until the school finally closed its doors in 2013.

The campus has been honored for all of it: a state highway marker in 2010, a place on the Virginia Landmarks Register in 2018, and listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 — twenty-one acres of Carroll County history that started with the idea of teaching farm kids to farm better.

Register listings for Woodlawn School, per the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Designation Reference Listed
Virginia Landmarks Register 017-5160 September 2018
National Register of Historic Places 100003322 January 2019

The buildings are not a museum and there is no visitor program. The marker on the highway is publicly readable, and the campus is visible from the road.

On the Route to Galax

US-58 is Virginia's longest highway, running the full width of the state from the Atlantic coast to the Cumberland Gap. Through Carroll County it carries the main east-west traffic between the I-77 corridor and Galax, and Woodlawn sits on that stretch.

West of Woodlawn the road continues to Galax, an independent city of about 6,700 people that is the regional center for old-time and bluegrass music. Beyond Galax, US-58 runs on toward Independence, the Mount Rogers high country and Damascus — the corridor that reaches most of southwest Virginia's outdoor recreation.

East of Woodlawn the road meets I-77 at Exit 14 and continues into Hillsville, the county seat, about four miles away.

What to Know

Getting there

From Fancy Gap, take US-52 north to Hillsville and then US-58 west, or use I-77 north to Exit 14 and head west. Both take about twenty minutes. The road is a well-maintained two-lane highway; expect farm equipment in season.

What you'll find

Working farmland, churches, homes, the school campus and its historical marker. Woodlawn is a community rather than a destination, and beyond the marker there is nothing set up for visitors.

Services

Very limited locally. Hillsville is about four miles east and Galax about nine miles west; both have fuel, groceries and restaurants.

The name

The Woodlawn name is generally traced to a colonial land grant to a member of the Wood family, whose descendants are not thought to have settled here. The land opened to settlement in the decades that followed.

Nearby

Register listings, dates and the school's history are from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources file for Woodlawn School (017-5160), which also covers the 2010 state highway marker. Population and land area are the 2020 Census figures for the Woodlawn census-designated place from the Census Bureau 2020 gazetteer files. Elevations are ground elevations from the USGS 3D Elevation Program point query service. Route identification was checked against OpenStreetMap, which records US-58 and US-221 running concurrently through Woodlawn as Carrollton Pike.

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