White Top Folk Festival

Grayson County · dedicated 2025 · Rte. 600, at intersection with National Forest Road

The White Top Folk Festival was held annually from 1931 to 1939 (except 1937) on Whitetop Mountain, Virginia’s second-highest peak. Organizers Annabel Morris Buchanan, John Powell, and John A. Blakemore sought to celebrate and preserve “old time music” that originated in the British Isles. The festival featured fiddlers, banjo players, ballad singers, and string bands as well as storytelling, theatrical presentations, and clog, Morris, and sword dancing. Thousands of people attended each year, including nationally known academic folklorists, music critics, composers, and in 1933 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The festival was cancelled in 1940 because of heavy rains and never resumed.

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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White Top Folk Festival

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