Southwest Virginia is always a fun place to visit and this past weekend we were fortunate to have some cooler weather and good flying conditions. We were in the metropolitan area of Mouth of Wilson and enjoyed a little time on the New River near the now-defunct Shady Shack Campground.
Yes – Mouth of Wilson is a strange name for a town but here is a little history of how we got there –
The name Mouth of Wilson originates from a young surveyor named Wilson, who died and was buried in a creek while surveying the line between Virginia and North Carolina in 1749. The creek was henceforth known as the Wilson Creek, the mouth of which empties into the New River where the town was established. The first European settler in the region was Robert Parsons, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War who was awarded a grant of 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) from the North Carolina line to Wilson Creek. One of Parsons’ nine sons, Johnny Parsons, built the first mill on the creek. The mill was built to grind corn, with a sawmill as an extension. Johnny Parsons served one term as the overseer of the South Fork and New River Turnpike in the Virginia General Assembly. Another mill was constructed in 1884 by Colonel Fields J. McMillan. The community built a power dam in 1930, introducing electricity to Mouth of Wilson.
