June Tolliver House

The novel The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, published in the early twentieth century by John Fox Jr., became one of the best-known American books of its day, telling a story of love, feuding, and change set in the Virginia mountains as the coal era arrived. It was adapted for the stage and screen and helped fix an image of Appalachian life in the national imagination.

The story is rooted in Big Stone Gap, where Fox lived, and the town has embraced its literary fame ever since. An outdoor drama based on the novel has been performed here for generations, and it holds the distinction of being named the official outdoor drama of Virginia. The June Tolliver House sits at the heart of that tradition, tying a real place to the beloved fictional heroine.

The house itself is a fine example of the comfortable Victorian homes built in Big Stone Gap during its early boom years, when coal and railroads brought sudden growth and ambition to the mountains. Restored and cared for over the years, it preserves the woodwork, proportions, and period feeling of a well-to-do home of that era.

By keeping the house intact, the community has held onto a tangible piece of the town's most prosperous and hopeful chapter. Walking its rooms gives visitors a sense of daily life in a mountain town that briefly imagined itself as a great industrial city, before the coalfields settled into their long, harder history.

Inside, the June Tolliver House functions as a craft gallery, showcasing and selling the work of artisans from across the southern Appalachian region. Quilts, woodwork, pottery, and other handmade goods reflect a mountain craft tradition that runs deep in this part of Virginia, where making things by hand has long been both livelihood and heritage.

For travelers, that makes the house more than a monument to a story. It is a living place to encounter the region's craftspeople and carry home something genuinely local, and it supports the artisans who keep these traditions alive. The blend of literature, history, and handwork gives a visit real texture.

Big Stone Gap grew up at a natural pass through the mountains and boomed with the coming of the railroads and the coal industry, earning a reputation as a cultural center of far southwest Virginia. Its historic downtown, museums, and old homes recall an era of high ambition, and it remains a good base for exploring the coalfield country around it.

This is one of the most remote and mountainous corners of the state, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee lines and the ridges of the Cumberlands. The region's music, crafts, and coal-mining history run deep, and the June Tolliver House offers an approachable, story-rich introduction to a part of Virginia many travelers never reach.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.