Virginia holds 534 documented abandoned places on the Urbex Maps atlas -- a number shaped by the state's position at the intersection of American history's most consequential chapters. The Civil War was fought on Virginia soil more than anywhere else; dozens of battlefield landscapes, fortifications, and military installations from that conflict remain partially intact or fully abandoned across the state. The Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains contain the ruins of 19th-century ironworks, flour mills, and resort hotels that the Industrial Revolution built and the changing economy discarded. The Tidewater region -- the network of estuaries, bays, and peninsulas where English settlement in America began in 1607 -- carries the ruins of the oldest European-American cultural landscape on the continent, alongside Cold War-era naval facilities and the derelict infrastructure of the 20th-century resort economy.
Virginia's urbex identity is also shaped by its relationship to the federal government. The state hosts an extraordinary concentration of military installations, and the transition of those installations from active to surplus or to national monument status has created a category of abandoned-but-accessible places that is unique to states with heavy military footprints. Fort Monroe in Hampton, transferred from Army control in 2011, is the most significant of these: the largest stone fort ever built in America, whose abandoned portions are accessible within a national monument. Virginia also holds some of the country's most distinctive roadside ruins -- the collection of giant presidential busts in a Williamsburg-area field is among the strangest and most photographed abandoned landscapes anywhere in the United States.
This guide covers 10 of the most iconic abandoned places in Virginia, from the Tidewater to the Appalachian coalfields, with free GPS coordinates on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas, YouTube embeds, and factual historical depth.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No account required for these 10 -- just coordinates with satellite imagery and access notes. The full Virginia database has 534 documented locations, covering Civil War sites, Blue Ridge resort ruins, Appalachian coal towns, and Tidewater institutional landscapes.
1. Presidents' Heads (Williamsburg Busts), Croaker
The Presidents' Heads in Croaker -- a field containing 43 giant busts of American presidents, each standing 18 to 20 feet tall and weighing several tons -- are among the strangest and most photographed accidental ruins in the United States. The busts were commissioned by Howard Hankins, a developer who had previously operated a Presidents Park attraction near Williamsburg, and installed on his property outside Croaker, James City County, after his commercial park venture failed. The figures were created by sculptor David Adickes of Houston, Texas, who had produced oversized sculptures of presidents for various commercial purposes.
The original Presidents Park near Water Country USA in Williamsburg opened in 2004 and closed in 2010, a victim of insufficient visitor numbers relative to its enormous construction and maintenance costs. Rather than demolish the sculptures, Hankins had them moved to his private property in Croaker, where they have been sitting in a field since 2010 -- occasionally visible from the road, periodically filmed by drone, and consistently appearing in lists of the most bizarre abandoned places in America. The busts are weathering in place, their white fiberglass surfaces streaked with mold and their features slowly softening.
The property is private and not formally open to the public, though the busts are visible from the road and the owners have occasionally allowed visitors and photographers. The site is in James City County, easily accessible from Williamsburg and Interstate 64. The combination of absurdist scale -- 43 giant presidents in a field -- and the genuine deterioration of the sculptures creates an effect that is simultaneously comic and melancholy. The Hankins family has been approached by various parties interested in relocating the sculptures, without resolution.
2. Swannanoa Palace, Afton
Swannanoa Palace on the summit of Afton Mountain in Nelson County is a marble Italian Renaissance mansion built between 1912 and 1924 by railroad magnate James Henry Dooley as a summer retreat for his wife Sallie May Dooley -- 52 rooms of Indiana marble, Tiffany stained glass, and Italian Renaissance detailing rising 3,000 feet above the Shenandoah Valley. Dooley, who had made his fortune in Richmond real estate and railroad investment, spared nothing: the building cost approximately $500,000 in 1912 dollars (roughly $15 million today) and took over a decade to complete. Sallie Dooley died in 1925, a year after the palace was finished; James Dooley died two years later, and the palace passed out of the family.
After several ownership changes, Swannanoa was purchased in 1949 by the metaphysical writer Walter Russell and his wife Lao Russell, who established the University of Science and Philosophy at the site and used the palace as their headquarters for decades. The Russells believed Walter had received cosmic revelations of fundamental importance to humanity, and the palace became a center of New Age philosophy and correspondence courses. The university continued operating after Walter Russell's death in 1963 under Lao Russell's direction until her death in 1988; subsequent ownership has been contested and the palace has deteriorated significantly.
The marble building on the Afton Mountain summit -- visible from Interstate 64 below and from the Blue Ridge Parkway above -- is one of the most incongruous structures in Virginia: an Italian palazzo on a mountain summit, accessible via a private road, deteriorating for want of the millions of dollars required to restore it. Various ownership groups have claimed the property and disputed control over the decades; as of mid-2026 the palace remains privately controlled and not regularly accessible. The views from the summit are extraordinary.
3. DeJarnette State Sanatorium, Staunton
DeJarnette State Sanatorium in Staunton is the most historically disturbing abandoned building in Virginia -- a state psychiatric institution for children established in 1932 by Dr. Joseph DeJarnette, the superintendent of the adjacent Western State Hospital and one of the most aggressive advocates of eugenics in the American medical establishment. DeJarnette was a prolific eugenicist who personally petitioned the Virginia General Assembly repeatedly for stronger forced sterilization laws, admired the Nazi eugenics program in print, and under whose authority thousands of patients at Western State were involuntarily sterilized under Virginia's Eugenic Sterilization Act of 1924 -- the law whose constitutionality was upheld by the US Supreme Court in the infamous Buck v. Bell decision of 1927.
The sanatorium that bears DeJarnette's name was built as a children's unit of the Western State Hospital complex, a Collegiate Gothic brick building on a hill above Staunton with views over the Shenandoah Valley. It housed children from the 1930s until 1996, when it was closed as part of Virginia's psychiatric facility consolidation. The building has been vacant since then, sitting adjacent to the still-operational Western State Hospital grounds and deteriorating steadily.
The combination of architectural quality -- the Collegiate Gothic brickwork is genuinely handsome -- and the building's association with one of the worst chapters of American medical history gives DeJarnette a weight that purely aesthetic industrial ruins lack. The building is on private land (the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health) and not publicly accessible, though it is visible from roads adjacent to the Western State campus. Various preservation and reuse proposals have been discussed over the years without result.
4. Fort Monroe (Casemate Area), Hampton
Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula -- the largest stone fort ever built in the United States, surrounded by a water-filled moat and enclosing 63 acres -- was the most strategically important military installation on the East Coast for most of American history. Begun in 1819 and substantially completed by 1834, Fort Monroe guarded the entrance to Hampton Roads, the anchorage where the James River, the Elizabeth River, and the Chesapeake Bay converge. Robert E. Lee served as an engineer at the fort in the 1830s; Edgar Allan Poe was briefly stationed there as an enlisted soldier. During the Civil War, the fort remained in Union hands even as Virginia seceded, making it a vital Union anchor in Confederate territory and the famous "Freedom's Fortress" where enslaved people who escaped to its walls were declared contraband of war rather than returned to their enslavers.
The Army transferred Fort Monroe to the Department of Defense's surplus list in 2011, and President Obama designated it a National Monument simultaneously. The transition from active military base to national monument created the characteristic situation of abandonment-within-public-access: the residential and office buildings of the former military community are in various states of occupancy and vacancy, while the historic fortification itself is open to visitors. The Casemate Museum, inside the original fortification walls, displays artifacts from the fort's 200-year history including the cell where Confederate President Jefferson Davis was briefly imprisoned after the Civil War.
The moated stone fort, the Victorian-era officers' quarters, and the various 20th-century military buildings outside the walls create a layered landscape of architectural periods and abandonment states. Some of the former residential buildings are occupied; others are vacant and deteriorating. The fort itself is open and free to visit year-round. Fort Monroe is also cited in our 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots guide.
5. Henricus Historical Park Ruins, Chester
Henricus (also called Henrico or Henricus Cittie) at Dutch Gap in Chesterfield County was the second English settlement in Virginia, founded in 1611 by Sir Thomas Dale on a fortified peninsula in the James River as a planned city intended to surpass Jamestown. Dale's vision was ambitious: Henricus was to have a university (planned as the first college in the American colonies), a hospital, and the infrastructure of a permanent English settlement. The settlement was developing significantly by 1616, with a church, several substantial buildings, and the beginnings of the promised educational institution.
The Indian Massacre of March 22, 1622 -- a coordinated Powhatan Confederacy attack that killed approximately 347 English settlers across Virginia in a single day -- virtually destroyed Henricus. The settlement never recovered. The location was abandoned by the surviving colonists within a year, and the site reverted to forest for three centuries. Archaeological excavations beginning in the 20th century identified the settlement's footprint, and the Henricus Historical Park was established to interpret the site with reconstructed structures.
The park interprets the 1611-1622 settlement period with reconstructed English and Powhatan structures and costumed interpreters. The adjacent Dutch Gap Conservation Area contains additional archaeological context. What makes Henricus interesting from a ruins perspective is the combination of the original settlement earthworks and archaeological remnants with the accumulated history of the Dutch Gap Canal -- a Civil War-era engineering project that modified the same peninsula -- creating a landscape of multiple abandonment layers stretching from 1622 to the present. The park is open to the public on a seasonal basis.
6. Union Carbide Plant, South Charleston Area
The Kanawha Valley along the West Virginia-Virginia border -- the corridor that runs through Charleston, South Charleston, and the surrounding communities -- was the center of the American synthetic chemical industry from the World War I era through the late 20th century. Union Carbide, FMC, DuPont, Monsanto, and dozens of smaller chemical companies built plants along the Kanawha River, drawn by the natural gas and brine resources of the region and by access to rail and river transportation. The valley was known as "Chemical Valley" or -- less charitably -- "The Toxic Valley" by the mid-20th century, and the environmental legacy of a century of chemical manufacturing has made the shutdown of these plants a complex process of decommissioning, remediation, and contested liability.
The Union Carbide plant complex in the South Charleston area -- adjacent to the site where the company maintained its primary research operations for decades -- represents the most significant abandoned chemical infrastructure in the mid-Atlantic region. The plant complex includes enormous industrial structures: reactor towers, distillation columns, pipe racks, and processing buildings that operated at industrial scale for most of the 20th century. Some portions have been remediated and cleared; others remain in a state of industrial abandonment.
The industrial archaeology of Chemical Valley is a specialized category of urbex that requires awareness of hazardous materials -- the ground and structures in former chemical plant sites can harbor toxic residues from a century of chemical production. Most of the former chemical plant sites in the Kanawha Valley are on private or remediated land and not publicly accessible. They are documented on the Urbex Maps atlas with appropriate access and hazard notes.
7. Pocahontas Ghost Town, Tazewell County
Pocahontas in Tazewell County is the community where the Appalachian coal boom began -- the town established in 1882 when the Flat Top Coal Land Association opened the first commercially viable mine in what would become the Pocahontas Coalfield, one of the richest deposits of metallurgical-grade coal in the world. The coal seam discovered at Pocahontas in 1882 was 14 feet thick and virtually pure metallurgical coking coal -- ideal for steelmaking and demanded by steel mills from Pittsburgh to Birmingham. Within a decade, the Pocahontas field was producing coal that fueled the British Royal Navy and built the Brooklyn Bridge.
The 1884 Pocahontas Mine Explosion killed 114 miners in a single event, at the time the deadliest mine disaster in American history. The explosion occurred when a miner's open lamp ignited accumulated methane gas in an unventilated section of the mine. The disaster shocked the country and contributed to the development of mine safety legislation, though meaningful federal mine safety regulation did not come until the Federal Coal Mine Safety Act of 1952 -- 68 years later.
Pocahontas operated as a mining community for 70 years, producing over 44 million tons of coal before the mine closed in 1955. The town declined steadily after closure, losing population to regional migration and the general economic deterioration of southwestern Virginia's coalfields. The Pocahontas Exhibition Mine -- a preserved section of the original 1882 mine -- is open for public tours, making Pocahontas one of the few Appalachian coal towns where the actual underground mine infrastructure is accessible. The above-ground town infrastructure is in various states of abandonment and occupied use.
8. Mountain Lake Hotel (Dirty Dancing), Pembroke
Mountain Lake Hotel (now Mountain Lake Lodge) in Giles County is the hotel where the 1987 film Dirty Dancing was filmed in 1986 -- the Kellerman's resort of the movie, with its lakeside setting and mid-century lodge architecture providing the visual backdrop for Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey's summer romance. The hotel opened in 1936 near the summit of Salt Pond Mountain and operated as a mountain resort through the 20th century, one of the last surviving examples of the Appalachian resort hotel tradition. Patrick Swayze stayed in Room 232 during filming; the hotel has traded on its Dirty Dancing association ever since.
The hotel's signature natural feature -- Mountain Lake, one of only two natural freshwater lakes in Virginia -- has been receding since the 1990s due to groundwater drainage through the limestone substrate. By the early 2010s, the lake had dropped to a fraction of its historical level, exposing the lake bed and eliminating the waterfront feature that had defined the resort's identity. The lake level has fluctuated since then; periods of higher water alternate with the near-total drainage that has characterized recent decades.
The hotel itself operated intermittently as Mountain Lake Lodge and Spa through the 2010s and into the 2020s, with various ownership and management arrangements. Periods of closure have alternated with partial reopening. The combination of the declining lake, the deferred maintenance of the mid-century structure, and the shifting economics of Appalachian mountain resort hospitality has given the property an air of melancholy even when technically operational. The Dirty Dancing connection continues to draw visitors who want to see where the famous lift was performed in the water -- whether or not any water is present.
9. Virginia State Penitentiary Site, Richmond
The Virginia State Penitentiary at 500 Spring Street in Richmond was the oldest continuously operating prison in the United States at the time of its closure in 1990 -- a facility that had housed condemned men, Civil War prisoners, and generations of Virginia's incarcerated population since its original construction in 1800, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect of the US Capitol. The prison operated continuously for 190 years before closing in December 1990 and was demolished in 1992, making it an entry in the urbex atlas that represents documented history rather than currently accessible ruins.
The Latrobe building of 1800 was expanded and rebuilt repeatedly over 190 years, with each generation adding new cell blocks, workshops, and execution facilities to the original structure. The electric chair used to execute 122 people between 1908 and 1962 was housed in the penitentiary; the last execution at the Spring Street facility took place in 1961 before Virginia moved its executions to the Greensville Correctional Center. The prison's location in the Shockoe Bottom/Oregon Hill area of Richmond -- just below the Belle Isle rapids where Union prisoners were held during the Civil War -- gave it a historical density remarkable even by Richmond standards.
The demolition of the Virginia State Penitentiary in 1992 was controversial among historians and preservationists who recognized Latrobe's original design as a significant work of early American institutional architecture. A video tour conducted in 1991 by two guards -- now on YouTube and the most widely circulated documentary record of the interior -- captures the facility just before its demolition. The site is now occupied by commercial and residential development in a rapidly gentrifying section of Richmond.
10. Elkins Estate (Halcyon Hills), Louisa County
The Elkins Estate in Louisa County -- also referred to in property records as Halcyon Hills -- is a rural Virginia mansion property associated with the family of US Senator Stephen B. Elkins of West Virginia, one of the most powerful political and business figures of the Gilded Age. Elkins made his fortune in New Mexico land speculation, West Virginia coal and railroad development, and New York financial circles, serving as Secretary of War under President Benjamin Harrison and as a US Senator from West Virginia from 1895 until his death in 1911. The Virginia property was part of the extended Elkins family real estate portfolio in the mid-Atlantic region.
The main house and its outbuildings on the Louisa County property have been vacant and deteriorating for decades, set in a rural agricultural landscape of fields and second-growth woodland. The property represents the category of Virginia rural abandonment -- the grand houses of Gilded Age and earlier wealth that lost their economic reason for existence as agriculture declined and families dispersed -- that is found throughout the Virginia Piedmont. The Blue Ridge foothills west of Richmond contain dozens of such properties, from antebellum plantation houses to Gilded Age retreats, in various states of abandonment.
The Louisa County property is on private land; access requires permission. The surrounding landscape -- rolling Piedmont farmland with Blue Ridge views on clear days -- is characteristic of the Virginia Piedmont that historical fiction and period films have made visually familiar. The property is documented on the Urbex Maps atlas with its GPS coordinates and access status.
FAQ
Are the Presidents' Heads (Williamsburg busts) open to the public?
The property is private and not formally open to the public, though the owners have occasionally permitted visitors and photographers. The busts are visible from the road. Access arrangements have varied over the years; check current status before attempting a visit. Trespassing on the private property without permission is inadvisable.
Can you visit Fort Monroe?
Yes. Fort Monroe National Monument is free and open year-round. The Casemate Museum inside the stone fort is open Tuesday through Sunday. The grounds of the former military installation are accessible on foot. Some of the former residential and office buildings on the base are occupied; others are vacant. The moated stone fort itself is publicly accessible.
Is Mountain Lake Lodge still operating?
Operations have been intermittent. Check Mountain Lake Lodge's current website for open/closed status before planning a visit. The lake level continues to fluctuate, which affects the resort's appeal for the Dirty Dancing association.
What happened to the Virginia State Penitentiary?
The penitentiary closed in December 1990 and was demolished in 1992. The 1991 prison tour video on YouTube is the most complete documentary record of the interior before demolition. The site at 500 Spring Street in Richmond is now developed with commercial and residential uses.
Is DeJarnette Sanatorium accessible?
The building is on state property adjacent to the active Western State Hospital campus and is not open to independent public access. It is visible from roads near the Western State campus. Various redevelopment proposals have been advanced without result.
Is Pocahontas Exhibition Mine worth visiting?
Yes. The mine is one of the few places in the country where you can walk inside an original 19th-century coal mine. Tours are offered seasonally. The mine is a genuine historical site of exceptional significance -- this is where the Appalachian coal industry began. Call ahead to confirm hours before visiting.
Conclusion
Virginia's 534 documented abandoned places represent one of the richest urban exploration inventories in the eastern United States -- a state where the layers of American history from the 1607 English settlement through the Civil War, the industrial era, and the 20th century are physically present in the landscape. The sites in this guide range from the absurdist (43 giant presidential busts in a field) to the historically weighty (the site of America's oldest continuously operating prison) to the environmentally complex (Chemical Valley's abandoned industrial infrastructure). Free GPS coordinates for all 10 are on the interactive atlas. Virginia rewards explorers who take the history as seriously as the ruins.
Explore more abandoned places in the US
- ●Abandoned Places in North Carolina: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Tennessee: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Georgia: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Abandoned Places in Louisiana: 10 Iconic Urbex Spots
- ●Ghost Towns USA: 20 Iconic Places
- ●Abandoned Places USA: 50 States, 50 Iconic Urbex Spots
