Woodstock Tower - part 2

One of the highlights of the Woodstock Tower is its view over the seven bends area of the Shenandoah River North Fork. This section of the river features a series of 180-degree direction changes, with resulting long fingers of land extending to the west or east.

Here are photos from the tower looking to the west, roughly scanning from south to north, showing this part of the River. Just to the south is the town of Woodstock, the county seat of Shenandoah County. Just over the ridge line shown here is West Virginia - with better clarity, you might see it in these photos.

A little history - Page County was carved out of Shenandoah County in 1812. Residents of what is now Page County complained to the Virginia Legislature about the multi-day trip from the east side of Massanutten to do state and county business. So Page County was formed (a small bite of Rockingham County was added to the Shenandoah County grant. Luray was formed as the County Seat of the new county.


To the east, the tower view looks back into Fort Valley, and Page County. Maasanutten Mountain is unique in that it has this valley inside of it - the mountain forms something of a ring, and the valley is a bowl inside of there. In the US west (where the mountains are much higher), they call these "basins" - but for some reason we don't call Fort Valley a basin.

That is the SNP ridgeline in the distance.