Appalachian Community Histories – Slant, Scott County: The Clinch River, Starnes Bluff, and the Swinging Bridge
Slant, Virginia, sits where the land falls toward the Clinch River in Scott County. The modern road map still keeps the name alive through Slant Lane, and Scott County’s official boat access listing places the Slant access on Slant Lane, Route 662, off Clinch River Highway in Slant. That simple location tells much of the story. Slant was never a large town with a courthouse square or a long business district. It was a river community, a road community, a church community, and a family community held together by the shape of the land around it.
The Clinch River is the thread running through Slant’s history. Roads followed the river valley where they could. Families settled along the benches and slopes above the water. Churches, schools, cemeteries, and bridges marked the places where people gathered. Even when the old institutions changed or disappeared, the names stayed in the landscape. Slant, Starnes Bluff, Starnes Slant, Swinging Bridge Lane, and the river access all point back to a community whose history survives in pieces.
Scott County itself was formed in 1814 from Lee, Russell, and Washington Counties, placing Slant’s deeper record trail inside the county’s early court, land, tax, and family records. The Library of Virginia’s Scott County microfilm collection includes county administrative records, court records, fiduciary records, land records, marriage and vital-statistics records, military and pension records, and wills. For a small place like Slant, those are often more important than any single published history.
The Meaning of Slant
The strongest place-name tradition says that Slant was named for the incline of the ridge down toward the Clinch River. That explanation fits both the geography and the way Appalachian communities often received their names. A bend, a gap, a family, a creek, a ridge, a mill, or the visible shape of the land could become the name by which people found one another. Local place-name material attributed to Omer C. Addington says Slant was named because of the slope down to the Clinch River, while the railroad used the related name Starnes for a stop there. That account should still be checked against the printed Addington source and original railroad or postal records, but it is a strong local-history lead.
The Starnes name is also tied to the community. Starnes Bluff Lane appears in Scott County’s modern road list, and cemetery listings identify Sander Cemetery at “Starnes Slant.” These records suggest that Slant and Starnes Slant were not separate worlds so much as overlapping ways of naming the same local neighborhood, river crossing, and family landscape.
The nearby geology helps explain why a name like Slant made sense. Virginia Energy’s description of the Clinchport quadrangle places the area within the Valley and Ridge physiographic province, with folded and faulted bedrock and formations dipping across the landscape. That is not community history by itself, but it helps explain the ridges, slopes, river bends, and narrow travel corridors that shaped life along the Clinch.
Starnes Bluff, Road Names, and the River Road
Slant’s history is best read through roads and water. Clinch River Highway, Slant Lane, Starnes Bluff Lane, and Swinging Bridge Lane are not just modern labels. They preserve older routes of movement. People traveled to church, school, cemeteries, river landings, farms, and neighbors’ homes by following the practical lines of the valley. The county’s road records connect those names to the present map, while older deeds, tax lists, and chancery causes can connect them to families and property.
The railroad layer adds another piece. Local place-name tradition says the CC&O Railroad used the name Starnes for a stop near Slant. The Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway, known through the larger Clinchfield story, became one of the major rail lines of the coal and mountain South, linking Southwest Virginia to wider industrial markets. For Slant, the railroad was not just a symbol of industry. It was another line across a difficult landscape, one more way the Clinch River corridor tied small communities to the outside world.
Because Slant was small, its railroad, postal, and road history needs careful reconstruction. National Archives postmaster appointment records are the best federal source for confirming whether Slant, Starnes, or Starnes Slant had a post office, when that office was established or discontinued, whether its name changed, and who served as postmaster. NARA explains that the appointment records show establishment and discontinuance dates, name changes, postmaster names, and appointment dates.
Slant School and Community Life
One of the clearest glimpses of Slant as a lived community comes from the newspaper record. The Gate City Herald issue of January 14, 1932, carried an item under “Slant Graded School,” with Lovely Mae Alley listed as reporter. The short school news item mentioned a Junior League play titled “Always In Trouble,” showing that Slant’s school was not only a place of instruction but a center of local activity.
That kind of newspaper item matters because it captures the ordinary life of a place that might otherwise vanish from the written record. A school play, a church service, a cemetery decoration, a road repair notice, or an obituary may be the only printed trace of people who spent their lives in the same valley. For Slant, the school record points to children, teachers, parents, church groups, and neighbors gathering around a small institution that helped define the community.
The Library of Virginia’s chancery records offer another path into that same world. Scott County chancery causes cover 1816 through 1942, with digital images available for 1816 through 1912 and indexed information available for most causes through 1942. Chancery records often include testimony, land disputes, estate divisions, debts, heirs, and family relationships, which makes them especially valuable for small-community history.
Church, Cemetery, and Family Memory
Churches and cemeteries preserve Slant’s history in a different way. Slant United Methodist Church Cemetery appears in cemetery listings and transcriptions, and a USGenWeb transcription describes the church and cemetery as being reached from Gate City by way of Clinchport and State Route 65. Cemetery sources are not perfect by themselves, but they are useful entry points into family networks, local surnames, and burial traditions.
Scott County cemetery listings also identify Sander Cemetery at Starnes Slant, with coordinates and a map-quadrangle reference. That kind of listing is valuable because it ties a family cemetery to a place-name that may not appear in every modern map search. In Appalachian communities, family cemeteries often hold the most durable evidence of settlement. Stones, death dates, surnames, and burial locations can reveal who stayed, who married into the neighborhood, and which families gave a place its local identity.
The names connected to Slant and Starnes Bluff should be followed through deeds, wills, tax books, marriage records, death certificates, obituaries, and church records. Starnes, Sanders or Sander, Carter, Taylor, Alley, Tipton, Hill, and other names appear as promising search paths. The goal is not only to build a list of families, but to understand how a small Clinch River community functioned through kinship, worship, schooling, farming, river travel, and neighborly obligation.
The Slant Swinging Bridge
The Slant swinging bridge became one of the most visible pieces of the community’s memory. Scott County Tourism has written about the county’s swinging bridges, noting that VDOT listed fourteen swinging bridges in Scott County at the time of that account. These bridges were more than curiosities. They were practical crossings in a county cut by rivers, creeks, hollows, and steep ridges.
The tourism account specifically remembers the Slant bridge near Slant Memorial Church. The writer recalled crossing the bridge after church services and walking down the hollow to relatives’ homes, while also connecting the bridge to the Sanders family cemetery and the local roads around Cat Channel Road. That memory shows how the bridge linked church, family, cemetery, and home in one local landscape.
By 2017, the Slant swinging bridge had become the subject of a preservation effort. WCYB reported that the bridge had been destroyed in a major storm two years earlier and that neighbors were trying to rebuild it. The report described the bridge as important to area recreation and county heritage, and said VDOT had agreed to match local funds if the county could raise $62,500, for a total of $125,000.
That story gives Slant’s history a modern chapter. The bridge was not only old lumber, cable, and memory. It was a public question. Was a small community crossing worth saving? To residents and local heritage workers, the answer was tied to recreation, memory, and identity. The bridge had carried people across the Clinch, but it had also carried stories from one generation to another.
What the Records Still Hold
Slant’s history is scattered, but it is not lost. The best evidence sits in layers. The official county boat access page confirms the modern location of Slant on Slant Lane off Clinch River Highway. The road list preserves Slant, Starnes Bluff, and Swinging Bridge names. The newspaper record gives a 1932 glimpse of Slant Graded School. Cemetery records tie the community to church grounds, family burial places, and Starnes Slant. Chancery causes and county microfilm provide the deeper legal and family record. NARA postmaster ledgers can help confirm the postal history.
That is often how small Appalachian places must be reconstructed. They do not always appear in one grand county history chapter. Instead, they appear in a school notice, a cemetery transcription, a road name, a river map, a court case, a post office ledger, a funeral notice, and a bridge story. Slant’s record asks the historian to read across those fragments and treat the landscape itself as evidence.
Why Slant Matters
Slant matters because it represents the kind of Appalachian community that can be easy to miss. It was not a county seat. It was not a boomtown. It did not need a famous battle or a large industry to have a history worth telling. Its story rests in the relationship between land and people, between a slope and a river, between a church and a bridge, between a school notice and a cemetery stone.
The name itself holds the place in memory. Slant describes a physical fact, the falling ground toward the Clinch. Starnes Slant adds the family and railroad layer. Slant Lane and the river access keep the name on the map. The old school news shows children and neighbors gathered in the 1930s. The cemetery records show generations buried near the roads they knew. The swinging bridge shows how a crossing can become a community symbol.
In that way, Slant is more than a small place in Scott County. It is a reminder that Appalachian history often survives in the ordinary records of ordinary communities. A river bend, a lane, a cemetery, a church, a post office lead, a school play, and a bridge can carry the history of a place long after the busiest years have passed.
Sources & Further Reading
United States Geological Survey. “CLINCHPORT, VA Historical Map GeoPDF 7.5×7.5 Grid, 24000-Scale, 1935.” USGS Store. https://store.usgs.gov/product/263481
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” U.S. Geological Survey. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Scott County, Virginia. “Boat Access.” Scott County, Virginia. https://www.scottcountyva.gov/296/Boat-Access
Scott County, Virginia. “Clinch River Access.” Scott County, Virginia. https://www.scottcountyva.gov/DocumentCenter/View/407/Clinch-River-Access
Scott County, Virginia. “Road List.” Scott County, Virginia. https://www.scottcountyva.gov/DocumentCenter/View/136/Road-List-PDF
Library of Virginia. “Scott County Chancery Causes.” Chancery Records Index. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/available.asp
Library of Virginia. “Scott County Microfilm.” County and City Microfilm Collection. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA255
Library of Virginia. “Using Personal Property Tax Records in the Archives at the Library of Virginia.” Library of Virginia. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/rn3_persprop.htm
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Land Tax Records.” Library of Virginia. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/rn1_landtax.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records: Postmaster Appointments, 1832–1971.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/postmasters-1832-1971.html
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder.” USPS. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/
United States Postal Service. “Postmaster Finder FAQs.” USPS. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmaster-finder-faq.htm
United States Postal Service. “Additional Resources for Postal History Research.” USPS. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/research-sources.htm
“Slant School News.” Gate City Herald, January 14, 1932. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19320114.1.4
Virginia Chronicle. “Gate City Herald.” Library of Virginia. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=GCH
Scott County Historical Society. “Scott County, Virginia Cemeteries.” Scott County, Virginia, Faces and Places. https://scottcountyva.info/wp-content/files/cemeteries.htm
Scott County Historical Society. “Starnes-Slant.” Scott County, Virginia Cemeteries. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vaschs2/starnes-slant.htm
USGenWeb Archives. “Slant United Methodist Church Cemetery, Scott County, Virginia.” USGenWeb Archives. https://files.usgwarchives.net/va/scott/cemeteries/slant.txt
Find a Grave. “Slant United Methodist Church Cemetery.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Kingsport, TN: Privately Printed, 1932. Reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1992. https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_Scott_County_Virginia.html?id=n2pWQWkA1cUC
Addington, Omer C. “How the Names of Places in Scott County Got Their Name.” Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia. Transcribed at Scott County Historical Society, Scott County Names. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~vaschs2/scott_co__names.htm
Scott County, Virginia. “Early History of Scott County.” Scott County, Virginia. https://www.scottcountyva.gov/
Scott County Tourism. “The Swinging Bridges of Scott County.” Explore Scott County. https://www.explorescottcountyva.org/blog/the-swinging-bridges-of-scott-county/
WCYB. “Time Running Out to Save Slant Swinging Bridge in Scott County.” WCYB, February 4, 2017. https://wcyb.com/news/local/time-running-out-to-save-slant-swinging-bridge-in-scott-county
Virginia Tourism Corporation. “Virginia’s Swinging Bridges.” Virginia is for Lovers. https://www.virginia.org/blog/post/virginias-swinging-bridges/
Virginia Department of Energy. Geology of the Clinchport Quadrangle, Virginia. Virginia Energy. https://energy.virginia.gov/commerce/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=2390
Virginia Places. “The Clinchfield Railroad.” Virginia Places. https://www.virginiaplaces.org/rail/clinchfield.html
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “Explore the Wild Clinch River from Rexrena Public Boating Access.” Virginia DWR, September 23, 2024. https://dwr.virginia.gov/blog/explore-the-wild-clinch-river-from-rexrena-public-boating-access/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Appalachian Regional Commission. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Slant is one of those Scott County communities where the road names, school notices, cemeteries, and river crossings have to be read together. I have not walked the Slant swinging bridge site myself, but the records show why the place still matters along the Clinch.