Nearby

With about 200 official residents, Washington is a bustling hub by Rappahannock standards. One can stop at the family-run Country Café on Main Street and, for a few bucks, enjoy some simple country cooking. That’s not surprising in this rural county. What is unusual is that visitors can also stroll across the street and, assuming a reservation has been made, dine on classic French cuisine at the Inn at Little Washington—the first five-star, five diamond restaurant/inn in America. Bring your Louis Quatorze wallet. Poke around R.H. Ballard for Georgetown-quality linens, rugs and gifts. Enjoy chamber music or a Shakespearean play at the Ki Theatre, or visit one of the village’s six art galleries. Here is a tiny town with some big-city amenities.

     This mix of simplicity and gentility defines not just Washington but all of Rappahannock. Tucked against the northern neck of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Rappahannock is a place stuck in time—a fact many of the residents are proud to point out. The late U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy, who had a home in Rappahannock, famously noted that the county was “75 miles and 75 years away from Washington, D.C.” For Col. John Bourgeois, longtime Rappahannock resident and Director Emeritus of the Marine Corps Band, those are conservative numbers. Asked if it takes about an hour-and-a-half to drive from Washington, Virginia, to Dupont Circle, he quips, “No, a century-and-a-half.”

     Truth be told, those may be only slight exaggerations. Rappahannock, with a population of 7,000, is one of the smallest of Virginia’s 95 counties—and it wants to stay that way. Its residents hold tight to a big idea: No growth, or, more precisely, very limited growth. While development proceeds at a breakneck pace across many rural areas in America, Rappahannock’s landscape remains largely as it was 200 years ago.

That’s a good thing, because the scenery is sweet, starting with the Shenandoah National Park, which occupies the western third of the county. In addition to the mountains, Rappahannock also offers an 18th-century network of villages and (working) farms—and, in the spring, a stunning collection of flowers, including fiddleheads and exotic lady slippers, not to mention ginseng and, growing in the wild, tantalizing morel mushrooms, which often find their way into local dishes.