Charlottesville
Jefferson's Lively Mountain Eden

By Nancy and Richard Woodworth

History. Mountain vistas. A lively university town. Vineyards and wineries.

These are among the assets that draw visitors to Charlottesville , the Piedmont area favored by Thomas Jefferson. He built Monticello , his “little mountain” home, in the rolling countryside he later described as “the Eden of America.” It overlooks the Blue Ridge Mountains , the town and the University of Virginia , which he founded.

Jefferson also persuaded his friend and fellow president, James Monroe, to build a home nearby. Another colleague, James Madison, lived two dozen miles to the north in Orange .

Jefferson ’s influence is everywhere obvious in the Charlottesville area. The University of Virginia that he designed is the region’s major presence. Thousands of tourists are directed to Monticello from a large visitor information center at the foot of its access road. A dozen or more small wineries fulfill the hopes of Jefferson, a wine connoisseur and would-be grape grower.

The Blue Ridge Mountains to the west are a spectacular backdrop for a prosperous university town tugged between tradition and change. The visitor to Charlottesville detects few Southern accents, testimony to the influx of outsiders and their amalgamation into a sophisticated, academic culture. The city is rife with dining, lodging, shopping and cultural opportunities that help make it among the most livable cities on magazine lists.

Traditionalists lament some of the changes. They contend that Charlottesville (now with a metropolitan population of 125,000) isn’t the nice little place it used to be. Rush-hour gridlock stalls traffic on the expressways, and shopping malls have sprung up on farmlands. But this is urban sprawl with a difference: highways and commerce co-exist with antebellum plantations and an amazing number of palatial new homes, each with sizable property and a view of the surrounding Blue Ridge .

Sir Bernard Ashley chose the Charlottesville area as the site for his third and largest country-house hotel. He was struck by the beauty and heritage of the town and countryside. “It’s not just a modern, thrown-up town,” he said. “It has heart.”

Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003.

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