The Appalachian Mountains of Virginia would qualify only as foothills (perhaps just "bumps...") to modern residents of Europe, the Middle East, India, and the Western United States. There's rarely more than 1,000 feet of relief, the difference between the mountain top and an adjacent valley. In contrast, in California Mount Whitney offers 14,000 feet of relief between its peak and Death Valley. Don't come to Virginia for the lengthy skiing season, or to climb all the 14,000-foot peaks - go to Colorado for that experience.

However, when the Europeans sneered at the smallness of everything in the New World, Thomas Jefferson responded by highlighting the size of the mammals and even the fossils at Saltville. Following that approach, we could s-t-r-e-t-c-h the standard explanation of Virginia topography a little. Virginia could be described as stretching from the Abyssal Plain of the deep Atlantic Ocean to the top of Mount Rogers, which is over a mile high at 5,729 feet...

Nonetheless, the Blue Ridge affected the travel routes of the Native Americans and served as a barrier to European settlement in the 1700's. Though the mountains of Virginia may not rival the height of the Alps or the Andes, they still shaped the settlement patterns of the state in the last 300 years. Virginia's mountains are centers of recreation now, in part because farming is so unsuccessful on the slopes so the land has been available for purchase by government agencies. The Appalachian Trail is aligned to follow the ridgelines of Virginia mountains, and those "bumps" do constrain the route of roads/railroads even today.

Physiographic Regions of Virginia The Fall Line The Role of the Blue Ridge Topography and Coal Railroads The "Mountains" of Virginia The Tuscarora/Clinch/Massanutten Sandstone Rain Shadows - The Orographic Effect Waterfalls of Virginia Which Way Do the Rivers Run? Wind Gaps and Stream Piracy	erosion + time = topgraphic relief

looking from Butt Mountain towards the Narrows in Giles County

Links

• Stratigraphic Framework of Cambrian and Ordovician Rocks in the Central Appalachian Basin From Campbell county, Kentucky, to Tazewell County, Virginia (U. S. Geological Survey Map Series I-2530, 1997)
• Blue Ridge image (from the Color Shaded Relief Map of the Conterminous United States)
• Ray Sterner's satellite images of Virginia
• image of Mid-Atlantic topography (North Carolina to Pennsylvania, from the National Atlas)
• Andrew Birrell's regional mosaics of satellite images 
• Topography of the United States 
• Resource Assessment of the June 27 and 28, 1995 Floods and Debris Flows in Shenandoah National Park 
• Tapestry of Time and Terrain (geology and topography, from USGS)
• World Topography - how high is your place? [Note: Virginia airport 3-letter codes include Lynchburg (LYH), Norfolk (ORF), Richmond (RIC), Roanoke (ROA), Washington-Dulles (IAD), Reagan National (DCA)...]
• Virginia topography (and flat West Virginia...) from the The Global Land One-kilometer Base Elevation (GLOBE) Project of NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center
• and remember, Virginia is just a part of the "blue marble" image developed by NASA GSFC/ NOAA, and USGS
• USA DEM Mosaic (from Earth Resource Mapping)

Fort Valley between the exposed flanks of the Massanutten Mountain syncline,
in the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and West Virginia
(can you identify where the forks of the Shenandoah River merge,
after flowing northward on either side of Massanutten?)