8 Virginia Small Towns Getting Ruined by Their Good Reviews

A stranger’s phone took a picture of your Virginia town, and now nothing is the same.

The photo got a few thousand likes, then a few hundred thousand, and by summer, the parking lots were full by nine.

These are the Virginia small towns that a good review loved a little too hard.

Chincoteague

Chincoteague sits at the tip of Virginia’s Eastern Shore with fewer than three thousand year-round residents and a very famous herd of ponies.

Once a year the ponies swim the Assateague Channel, and the island buckles.

The Pony Swim now draws a crowd of up to 50,000 people, which is more than fifteen times the town’s population.

Folks wake at three in the morning to plant a chair in the marsh mud for a swim that lasts about five minutes.

Book a room the week of the swim, and you’ll find the island sold out down to the last cot.

Cape Charles

Cape Charles spent decades as a sleepy railroad town on the Chesapeake Bay side of the Eastern Shore, and about a thousand people liked it that way.

Then the free public beach and the sunsets over the water made every travel list in reach of Washington.

The Eastern Shore turned into Virginia’s fastest-growing tourist region, and Cape Charles landed at the center of it.

Mason Avenue used to be galleries and slow afternoons.

These days, a Cape Charles local guards a spot in Central Park the way you’d guard the last deviled egg at a cookout.

Floyd

Floyd sits high in the Blue Ridge with roughly 450 residents and the only traffic light in the whole county.

Every Friday night, the Floyd Country Store fills with fiddles and flatfoot dancers, and the sidewalk out front fills right along with it.

The Friday Night Jamboree started in 1986 with five fiddlers looking for a place to play.

Now the Country Store pulls around 25,000 visitors a year, and that’s before FloydFest brings the tents and the traffic up Route 8.

A town with one traffic light doesn’t have a second gear for that kind of Friday.

Damascus

Damascus sits in the far southwest corner of Virginia with fewer than 800 residents and seven trails crossing right through the middle of it.

The Appalachian Trail runs down the main street, which earned the place the name Trail Town USA.

Every May the town throws Appalachian Trail Days, and the population jumps to about 25,000 for the weekend.

Thru-hikers, gear vendors, and reunion crowds turn the sleepy crossroads into the biggest hiker gathering on the planet.

Then the tents come down, and Damascus goes back to being a town where the Virginia Creeper Trail is the busy part of the day.

Occoquan

Occoquan is a river town of about a thousand people tucked below the traffic of Northern Virginia, and twice a year it disappears under a crowd.

The Fall Arts and Crafts Show packs the streets with more than 200 vendors and adds around 10,000 visitors.

That's ten times the town in a single weekend.

The streets close, the parking lots fill, and the folks who live above the shops learn to plan their errands around it.

Prince William County keeps voting Occoquan its top destination, which is a compliment the residents pay for with their weekends.

Abingdon

Abingdon anchors the southwest corner of Virginia with a brick main street, the Barter Theatre, and one end of the Virginia Creeper Trail.

The Barter Theatre opened in 1933 as the longest-running professional theater in the country, and it still fills seats every season.

Add the 34 miles of Creeper Trail, and the town keeps a steady stream of hikers and cyclists rolling downhill into it.

Trail tourism alone brings around $25 million a year to the area.

Coolest small town lists keep finding Abingdon, and the shuttle vans on Main Street prove word got out.

Luray

Luray is the seat of Page County, a Shenandoah Valley town of under 5,000 folks between the Blue Ridge and Massanutten Mountains.

Down the road sit Luray Caverns, the largest cave system in the eastern United States, with a stone organ that plays the walls.

The caverns have pulled visitors since 1878, and the tour buses haven't stopped coming.

Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park sit right on the doorstep, so leaf-peeping season stacks another crowd on top.

US 211 becomes the only way through, and a fender-bender on the mountain backs cars up past the Hawksbill Diner.

Try grabbing lunch in downtown Luray on an October Saturday, and you'll wait behind three states' worth of hungry hikers.

Onancock

Onancock is a harbor town of about 1,200 on the bay side of Virginia's Eastern Shore, chartered back in 1680.

Captain John Smith called the spot the gem of the Eastern Shore, and travel writers keep borrowing the line.

The deep-water wharf pulls boaters up Onancock Creek from all over the Chesapeake, and the arts scene pulls everyone else.

Galleries, a wharf full of visiting sailboats, and a film festival keep the calendar packed most weekends.

A short ferry ride away sits Tangier Island, which sends its own day-trippers back through Onancock's little wharf every afternoon.

Onancock still keeps its shops open through winter, which tells you the locals fight to hold onto the town they know.