The view from Up Here

For those of you who are asking, "Here" is Front Royal, Virginia, a pretty little town 70-some miles west of Washington DC, and a world away in so many ways. Front Royal has a population of something over 15,000 and it sits along the Shenandoah River, surrounded by that stretch of the Appalachian Mountain Chain that to the south is called the Blue Ridge and then the Smoky Mountains, and a ways to the north becomes the Poconos and ultimately the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, the White mountains, and so forth. You get the idea. Nearby, of course, are pieces of the Appalachian Trail, and the northern end of Shenandoah National Park.

Front Royal was settled in the 1750's and incorporated in 1788. For most of its history it has been a sleepy little town, possibly excepting May 23, 1862 for a few hours.