THE HIGHLAND COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Northern Sandstone Ridges setting.
Highland County has 415.2 square miles of land in Virginia. 4 mapped landscape regions meet across Highland County: Northern Sandstone Ridges, Northern Dissected Ridges and Knobs, Northern Limestone/Dolomite Valleys, among others.
Long, roughly parallel ridges and valleys follow folded and faulted rock layers. Limestone valleys, sandstone ridges and other geologic contrasts produce varied terrain and numerous regional springs and caves.
Regional context: Ridge and Valley ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Highland County intersects 4 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Northern Sandstone Ridges59.5%
- Northern Dissected Ridges and Knobs29.4%
- Northern Limestone/Dolomite Valleys7.5%
- Northern Shale Valleys3.7%
Finding your parcel within Highland County
The atlas lists 2 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Highland County, including McDowell, Monterey. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Highland County by land and water
The Census records 0.69 square miles of water within Highland County, or 0.2% of its total area. That share is close to Highland County’s 0.2%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Highland County has 1,318 times the land area of nearby Monterey town (0.32 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Augusta County, Bath County within Virginia. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.