Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [21]
Cross Roads Inn B&B on Route 211 is a white clapboard Victorian inn with a beautiful view of Massanutten. It’s operated by an Austrian couple who serve homemade apple strudel and mulled wine or Austrian coffee in the afternoon. Six guest rooms, each with a private bath, are furnished with antiques and down comforters on canopy beds. Children welcome, but no pets. The innkeeper, Roland Freisitzer, is a native Austrian from Salzburg. He and his American wife, Mary-Lloyd, lead seven-day Austrian ski tours. (tel. 888-740-4157 or 540-740-4157, www.crossroadsinnva.com, $$)
The Red Shutter Farmhouse B&B sits on 20 acres off Rt. 793 near Endless Caverns. (tel. 540-740-4281, $)
Pet-friendly: The nearby Budget Inn (tel. 540-740-3105, $) and Days Inn (tel. 540-740-4100, $) both accept pets.
Information
New Market Area Chamber of Commerce, tel. 877-740-3212.
Town of New Market, tel. 540-740-3432, www.newmarketvirginia.com.
Events
The New Market Battlefield Re-enactment is held in mid-May (tel. 540-740-3101), and Heritage Days are the fourth weekend in October (tel. 540-740-3212).
TRIVIA: The name New Market comes from the English racetrack of the same name. In the early days of the Virginia town there was a racetrack nearby.
Sidetrip: Massanutten Mountain
Like many Indian terms, “Massanutten” as it’s used today has little in common with its original meaning. Our name for a 30-mile mountain range that crops up dramatically from the lower Shenandoah Valley meant, to Indians, “basket” or “potato ground” (proof positive that we can’t even be sure of the original meaning of Indian words!) Be that as it may, this long range stretches from Harrisonburg to Strasburg. Paralleling to the east the valley’s major north-south routes, it rarely rises to any significant peak and is broken only now and again by gaps.
One such passage, east of Edinburg, leads into Fort Valley, a depression in the mountain range through which Passage Creek flows north into the Shenandoah River. Here, the mountains rise steeply from either side to form an isolated spot of few inhabitants, refreshingly free of strip malls, billboards and neon signs. George Washington surveyed this valley for Lord Fairfax, making it one of the few spots in Virginia where a hiker can literally walk the path of our first commander-in-chief and president.
Whereas Shenandoah National Park, which lies due east of Massanutten, gets the car traveler and tourist, Massanutten Mountain gets those hungry for human-powered recreation. There is a 70-mile trail that loops around the east and west ridges — the “eye” of this sewing needle-shaped range. The ridge top trail leads to more remote paths down either side of the mountain, which are popular with hikers. Near Harrisonburg, the Massanutten Resort operates in four seasons with skiing in winter.
The place for information about outdoor fun in-and-around Massanutten is the national forest visitors center in New Market Gap, a few miles east of New Market on US 211. Besides a complete natural history, it offers short interpretive trails, like the Massanutten Storybook Trail, which explains the mountain’s geologic history. The .2-mile Discovery Trail is wheelchair-accessible, and the Lion’s Tale National Recreation Trail was designed for visually impaired.
Camp Roosevelt is a campground north of New Market gap that dates to the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. It was the first CCC camp in America, opened in 1933 during the Great Depression. For a decade thereafter, unemployed men planted trees, built fire towers and improved the surrounding national forest. An easy 3.4-mile hike leads from Camp Roosevelt up Massanutten’s east ridge to end at Kennedy Fire tower, an impressive structure made of limestone blocks quarried by the CCC. In the early days of the national forest, fire towers and the local residents who manned