Virginia State Map

Counties and independent cities

Virginia has 38 of the 41 independent cities in the US: every Virginia city is separate from the counties around them and count as county-level areas for the Census. That is why a Virginia county map shows 133 units (95 counties plus 38 cities). Some cities and counties share a name but are separate governments, such as Richmond city and Richmond County, which lie in different parts of the state, or Fairfax city, which sits inside Fairfax County but is not part of it. Towns, by contrast, remain part of their county.

Regions of Virginia

• Tidewater and Hampton Roads: the low Coastal Plain along Chesapeake Bay, cut by the Potomac, Rappahannock, York and James rivers. Hampton Roads, where the James meets the bay, holds Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth and Suffolk. Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown are on the peninsula between the York and James.
• Eastern Shore: the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic, reached from Virginia Beach by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Chincoteague and Assateague Island are on its Atlantic side.
• Northern Virginia: the Washington, D.C., suburbs in Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William counties and the city of Alexandria.
• Piedmont: rolling country between the fall line at Richmond and Fredericksburg and the Blue Ridge, with Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Danville.
• Blue Ridge: a narrow mountain range crossing the state from northeast to southwest. Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive cover its northern section; the Blue Ridge Parkway continues south past Roanoke to North Carolina.
• Valley and Ridge: the Shenandoah Valley, with Winchester, Harrisonburg, Staunton and Lexington, plus the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley around Blacksburg.
• Southwest Virginia: the Appalachian Plateau coalfields and the high country around Mount Rogers, with Abingdon, Bristol and Big Stone Gap.

Major highways

• I-95: the main north–south route on the East Coast, from North Carolina through Petersburg, Richmond and Fredericksburg to the Capital Beltway and Maryland.
• I-81: runs the length of the Valley and Ridge, from Bristol on the Tennessee line through Roanoke, Harrisonburg and Winchester to West Virginia.
• I-64: east–west from West Virginia through Lexington, Charlottesville and Richmond to Williamsburg and Hampton Roads, crossing the harbor on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
• I-66: from I-81 in the Shenandoah Valley east to Arlington and Washington, D.C.
• I-77 and I-85: I-77 crosses Southwest Virginia through Wytheville between West Virginia and North Carolina; I-85 runs from Petersburg southwest to North Carolina.
• I-495 and I-295: the Capital Beltway around Washington, D.C., and the eastern bypass of Richmond.
• US 13 and US 58: US 13 crosses the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and runs up the Eastern Shore; US 58 follows the southern border from Virginia Beach to the far western tip of the state.