3 Best Sights in Blacksburg and the New River Valley, Central and Western Virginia

Almost a century before Virginia Tech's founding in 1872, the Historic Smithfield plantation was built in what was then the frontier wilds. Aristocratic colonist and Revolutionary War patriot William Preston moved his family to the estate in 1774, a year before the war began. Among his descendants were three Virginia governors and four U.S. senators. Today costumed interpreters, authentic period furniture, and Native American artifacts reveal how different life in the New River valley was more than two centuries ago.

Virginia Tech is the state's largest university. A small college just a few decades ago, the school is now known for top-notch research programs and its Hokies football team, regularly ranked in the top 10. The focal point of the sprawling campus is the Drillfield, a vast green space surrounded by hefty neo-Gothic buildings built of what is known locally as "Hokie Stone" masonry.

What is now the Wilderness Road Regional Museum was once lodging for settlers making their way west on a Native American route that went from Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Gap. The man who founded the town of Newbern built this house in the same year, and the structure has since served as a private home, a tavern, a post office, and a store. Today the house contains antique dolls, swords and rifles, an old loom, and other artifacts of everyday life. A self-tour map of Newbern, the only Virginia town entirely within a National Register of Historic Places district, is available at the museum.