Rockbridge County: The Michael Miley Collection

Rockbridge County lies at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley in southwestern Virginia. After the Civil War, renowned photographer Michael Miley took up residence in Lexington, where he established a studio and created a one-of-a-kind photographic archive with over 7,000 photographs spanning nearly 70 years. In 1866, Robert E. Lee was invited to come to Lexington to be president of small Washington College. Miley photographed Lee extensively, along with the townspeople of Lexington and Rockbridge County, students and faculty of Washington and Lee, unusual characters who seem to abound in the area as well as gorgeous landscapes of the mountains and rivers of the region. Rockbridge County: The Michael Miley Collection shares photographs of life in this rural landscape during the last third of the 19th century. It affords the modern reader with a remarkable view into a sometimes familiar but often foreign past.

Richard A. Straw is a historian at Radford University where he teaches courses on Appalachian, Southern, and public history. He is the author of two other books in the Images of America series, Blacksburg and Athens. All of the photographs in this book are from the Michael Miley Collection at Washington and Lee University and are used with their generous permission.