Conspicuously located alongside the road between the town of Broadway and the city of Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, the Baxter House displays Virginia log construction at its finest. The western half of the double-pen structure has full-dovetail corner notching. The precisely fitted logs, devoid of chinking, illustrate a building method associated with the Valley’s German settlers. The quality of the construction is on a par with that usually associated with fine furniture. The eastern and earlier half, has less uniformly dressed logs with regular chinking making it typical of the log construction employed by Scotch-Irish settlers. The Baxter House was built in the late 18th century for George Baxter, whose son served as one of the early presidents of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) in Lexington.
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