Views : 101,387
Genre: People & Blogs
Date of upload: Dec 21, 2021 ^^
Rating : 4.926 (51/2,693 LTDR)
RYD date created : 2022-04-03T04:43:06.008948Z
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Top Comments of this video!! :3
I have literally lived from one end of Virginia to the other, and this was a fairly well done presentation. The only thing I would fix is that you left out Roanoke and Blacksburg/Montgomery county. Roanoke is an important city in the western part of the state, ninth largest in the state and a metro population of over 300K. It has a history closely associated with the railroads. It sits at the boundary between the piedmont and mountain regions along an ancient Native American path leading into the mountains that followed roughly the same route as I-81 today. Blacksburg/Montgomery county is just next door about 30 minutes away. Blacksburg is home to Virginia Tech which has a student population of nearly 35K and is very diverse, drawing many students from around the world. The Blacksburg/Montgomery area has a population of around 100K, and together with Roanoke forms the most economically significant region in the western part of the state.
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As a Virginian, this video is perfect! I've watched videos about my state from other creators, and they have always failed to capture the essence of my home. You sir, have done a fantastic job at describing all the nuances of the state. Although I do have one tiny local qualm lol; the the city of Staunton mentioned in 20:43 is pronounced as if the the "u" is silent, pronounced like Stanton. :)
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Bluefield VA is also split in half. As a native Virginian, thanks for the video! @10:15, that is not Virginia. That is the New River Gorge bridge in WV.
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Hey, I’ve been loving your videos. So incredibly detailed and interesting. Quick very minor thing. The picture you have for Fredericksburg is actually Fredericksburg, TX, a pocket of Texas known for its major German influence. I’m from Texas and know that town well and thought it looked strangely familiar. A town probably worth talking about when you do your Texas video. Anyway, keep up the great work.
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Great to see you back, excellent research as always. One thing to point out, is as more and more time goes on an argument can certainly be made that the Megalopolis extends down to Richmond. The D.C suburbs continue to spread a bit further south and the Richmond suburbs have creeped a bit further north. While there are still some rural areas in between the two, and parts of it might be less densely populated than other more traditional parts of the Megalopolis, that gap is certainly shrinking.
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I’m a native Virginian from the Shenandoah valley on the outskirts of the independent city of Harrisonburg which is the county seat of Rockingham county VA. and my ancestors on my father’s side have been in the old dominion since the mid 1700s when my 5x great papaw came over from Northern Ireland as an indentured servant to an English tobacco plantation owner in the tidewater. After the revolution my 5x great papaw went west across the blue ridge and settled in the valley in Rockingham county outside Harrisonburg and got his land from George Washington. Most of the land in the Valley was owned in the upper half of it by George Washington and in the lower half of it by Thomas Jefferson. The George Washington national forest is up near me straddling the state line with WV. going out towards the south branch of the Potomac river and further south near Lexington by Rockbridge County is the Natural bridge in the Thomas Jefferson national forest that also straddles the state line all the way through the panhandle to KY.
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There is so much to see and do in Virginia that is hard to see it all in one trip. I love Shenandoah National park where Skyline drive is with places to hike along the drive. It is very lovely. At the end of the drive you meet the blue ridge parkway. I plan to drive this in the summer. I have only done the part from Asheville to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is a very lovely drive but scary because it is a two lane road on the mountain. It has the most civil war sites of all states too.
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The growth of Northern VA (NoVA) since the Great Depression/ New Deal and then World War II that really kicked off the Federal Government as a juggernaut of job and population growth has been truly an unprecedented change to a state. Here are the populations of the big 4 NoVA counties in 1930 vs. 2020:
1930 2020
Arlington 27k 238k
Fairfax 25k 1.15m
Loudoun 20k 420k
Prince William 14k 482k
All of these counties were originally agricultural counties until the sprawl from DC arrived. Fairfax was at one time known as a huge dairy farming county. There are now no working farms in Arlington & Fairfax, as they are all subdivided into housing and office parks. Same with the Eastern half or Loudoun. PW still has a ways to go, but it is the 2nd biggest county in the state. Loudoun and PW will continue to boom, perhaps someday catching up with Fairfax, which is growing much more slowly, as its vacant lots are now gone while the other two have lots of room to grow.
The growth there is what turned VA, which was a reliably Red state very similar to the rest of the South from the 1960s till the early 2000s, into a swing state. Fairfax alone has 1/8th of all the voters in the state. These counties (along with Alexandria) are the engine that now runs the state. The difference between these big counties and those down near Bristol on the TN line is like night & day. I am not sure there are too many other states that have such a big difference between parts of the state both economically, politically and geographically.
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@ThatIsInterestingTII
2 years ago
The next state up will be New York! If you're from New York, please respond to this comment with any information you'd like to include about your home state!
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