A letter from a local
Trail Town USA is not a nickname. It’s zoning.
Seven trails cross in Damascus — the Appalachian Trail literally runs down the sidewalk on Laurel Avenue, and every May the entire hiking world shows up for Trail Days. The Virginia Creeper rail-trail's most beautiful seventeen miles descend from Whitetop right through town; the shuttle economy runs on it.
Whitetop Laurel Creek, alongside the Creeper, is one of Virginia's finest wild trout streams — ten minutes to rising fish. Iron Mountain's singletrack leaves from downtown, and Grayson Highlands' wild ponies graze at 5,000 feet half an hour away.
A few hundred of us live here full-time, at prices that let a bike mechanic own a house with a porch. Hiker season brings the world through town; winter gives it back.
— Maybelle