Ragged Mountain Natural Area Trails

Before encircling Charlottesville Reservoir, the trail at Ragged Mountain Natural Area gets off to a rough start, gaining more than 300 feet in the first half-mile. After descending from the rocky peak of Round Top, however, the trail is largely level. Seemingly remote despite the proximity of I-64, the natural area protects both boulder-studded slopes and a creek-fed marsh. A string of peaks reaching south and west from Charlottesville, the Ragged Mountains remain true to their name: boulders jut from the hillsides, and roots crisscross the earth. Cloaked in mature forest, the hillsides must appear today much as they did when Edgar Allen Poe hiked them as respite from his studies at the University of Virginia—woodland ambles that inspired his Tale of the Ragged Mountains. In the 1820s Poe could have explored a steep-sided stream valley where modern visitors find Charlottesville Reservoir. In 1885 Charlottesville partnered with the university to dam the creek flowing southeast below Round Top, creating a public water supply. Twenty-three years later, the impoundment was tripled in size. Then in the 1920s a 13-mile-long, cast-iron aqueduct was laid underground to siphon water from Sugar Hollow Reservoir. The pipe still carries 4 million gallons daily, and this hike crosses the stone flume that channels that torrent toward its final cascade into the reservoir.