Rockfish Gap marks the south end of Skyline Drive, where it meets Highway 250, Interstate 64 and the start of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Rockfish Gap entrance station takes cards only. In 1818 a state commission met at a tavern here and chose Charlottesville for the University of Virginia.
You've just passed the entrance station and mile one hundred and five, and it's all uphill from here. A buffalo path crossed the mountain at this gap. Then it got a dirt road, carrying Valley produce over to the Rockfish River, and a famous tavern. In August of eighteen eighteen, a state commission met at the Mountain Top Tavern to decide where the University of Virginia should go, with Thomas Jefferson in the chair and James Madison beside him. Jefferson had used his contact in the legislature to get himself appointed. They found, by a vote of sixteen to five, that Charlottesville was the right and proper place, over Staunton and Lexington. The mileposts on your left count down from here. The first overlook is McCormick Gap, at mile one hundred and two point four, on your left, with a good view of the Valley and Waynesboro.
Photo: Dlthewave, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0