The Red Flannel Rag

Hopkins Gap is located in the upper left corner of this map. It is about 15 miles northwest of Harrisonburg, Virginia, which lies in the center of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia between the Allegheny Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Hopkins Gap is nestled among the Allegheny Mountains on the eastern edge of

the area known as Appalachia and in the western section of the Shenandoah Valley of

Virginia. Hopkins Gap was forged into the mountains by the Shoemaker River that now

divides the eastern side of the Allegheny Mountains from the western side of Little

North Mountain, a smaller range of the Alleghenies. The Shoemaker River still cools the

Gap as it carries away the rain that falls on the mountainsides and dumps it into the

larger Shenandoah River far away. As the river carries the rain away, it replenishes the

rich soil that once nourished small fields of corn, rye, and wheat of the highest quality.

The best potatoes east of Idaho were grown in vegetable gardens near the river’s edge.

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