It's pretty obvious that Virginia has its ups and downs, with a flat Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay on the east side vs. mountains concentrated on the west side of the state. What's not so obvious is.... why is Virginia not completely flat, or completely mountainous. The Appalachian "mountains" of Virginia would qualify only as foothills/bumps to modern residents of Europe, India, and the Western United States. Over 200 years ago, when the Europeans sneered at the smallness of everything in the New World, Thomas Jefferson responded by emphasizing the size of the mammals and even the size of the fossils at Saltville. Size mattered, and everything was bigger and better in Virginia. Sorry, Mr. Jefferson, but Virginia's mountains are puny. There's rarely more than 2,000 feet of topographic relief (the difference in elevation between the top of a mountain and the bottom of the adjacent valley). In California, Mount Whitney offers 14,000 feet of relief between its peak vs.Death Valley. Virginia is flat for the same reason we have only two natural lakes: after 200 million years of erosion, the land has been worn down. Uplift and differential erosion has left us some remaining minor "ups and downs" with clffs and waterfalls, but don't come to Virginia for the lengthy skiing season or to climb 14,000-foot peaks. Virginia's landscape is too old, too eroded. Go to Colorado, with Rocky Mountains that are only 65 million years old, to see tall mountains and natural lakes that have not been drained by their outlet streams... yet. Virginia tourism officials make the most of the remaining topographic relief in the state, highlighting scenic mountain vistas and cool summer nights in the mountains. The Appalachian Trail is aligned to follow the ridgelines of Virginia mountains, so the views can be spectacular.

relief of Virginia, from Atlantic Ocean to Blue Ridge summit Source: NOAA National Geophysical Data Center

We could s-t-r-e-t-c-h the standard explanation of Virginia topography a little further. If you think in terms of tectonic plates rather than continents, Virginia could be described as reaching not just from sea level, but from the Abyssal Plain of the deep Atlantic Ocean to the top of Mount Rogers. Virginia's highest mountain is just over a mile high, at 5,729 feet... but if you measure Virginia from the bottom of the deep ocean, the state could claim it rivals the relief in Colorado.

Though Virginia's topographic relief is not great compared to the western United States, the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians still affected the travel routes of the Native Americans and served as a barrier to European settlement in the 1700's. The physical geography helped shape the boundaries of cultural regions and county boundaries, and of course the path of canals, railroads, and modern highways. immigrants moving west from the bay had to climb up and over the Blue Ridge... Eastern Virginia is flat. Settlers who arrived at the Atlantic shoreline were able to migrate westward with few physical limits for 100 years - until they reached the Blue Ridge. The 1000-foot climb over the ridge was barrier to travel from eastern Virginia, but settlers from the Philadelphia region could access the Shenandoah Valley through an easier route. Starting in the 1730's, the Pennsylvania "Dutch" along with the Scotch-Irish moved into the Shenandoah Valley from the north. Today, the Menonnites in Virginia are still concentrated in the Shenandoah Valley, reflecting that historical migration in the mid-1700's. The Europeans who first settled in the Shenandoah Valley were different from the Europeans who first settled in Tidewater. Differences in agricultural crops, the extent of slavery, and even the shape of the barns between Tidewater and the Shenandoah Valley can be traced back to the initial settlement pattern, and that pattern was shaped by the topography. There is a clear link between physical and cultural geography here.

... but it's a relatively flat walk from Philadelphia to the Shenandoah Valley Source: Global Land One-km Base Elevation (GLOBE) Project

Almost 125 years after Jamestown was settled, almost all the English were still living east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. No counties had been organized west of the Blue Ridge - which you can see on a map of political boundaries, showing the western edge of local political authority in the colony in 1732.

Virginia county boundaries in 1732
Source: Newman Library - Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

Links

• 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
• US Geological Survey
• Debris-Flow Hazards in the Blue Ridge of Virginia
• Debris-Flow Hazards within the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States
• 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)
• Stratigraphic Framework of Cambrian and Ordovician Rocks in the Central Appalachian Basin from Richland County, Ohio, to Rockingham County, Virginia (U. S. Geological Survey Map Series I-2264)
• Tapestry of Time and Terrain
• 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, Goddard Space Flight Center, NOAA, and USGS

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?)

erosion + time = topgraphic relief

looking from Butt Mountain towards the Narrows in Giles County