Located in the Sinking Creek Valley, the former Craig County Poor Farm is important for its role in promoting the welfare of the county’s poor and needy residents during its years of operation between 1892 and 1921, and is among the rare surviving examples of poor farms or poorhouses in Virginia. The poor farm superintendent’s two-story house, a simple dwelling of frame construction with vernacular Greek Revival elements, stood on the grounds by 1892. Next to the house stands an 1892 poorhouse cottage, one of three residential cottages that stood on the grounds in 1909. The two-bay, two-room cottage is reminiscent of servants’ quarters of the 19th-century era and conforms to the standard poorhouse lodging form in Virginia at the turn of the 20th century. The property also retains from its poor farm period a stone cellar structure, a frame granary-corncrib, the County Farm Cemetery where poor farm residents were buried, and a frame barn. In 1921 the county sold the farm to a family who used the superintendent’s house as their farmhouse and converted the surviving poorhouse cottage to a chicken house.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia