Mount Jefferson is a
mountain located just outside
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...
, United States, in
Albemarle County. It lies south of
Lewis Mountain, and is positioned at the northeastern edge of the
Ragged Mountains
The Ragged Mountains are a small chain of rugged hills—an offshoot of the Blue Ridge Mountains—southwest of Charlottesville, Virginia. have been preserved as the Ragged Mountain Natural Area.
The region provided the atmospheric se ...
.
It was named Mount Jefferson in honor of
Thomas Jefferson after the establishment of the
Leander McCormick Observatory on the summit in 1885. Jefferson had urged the purchase of the mountain for the
University of Virginia, in part because of its suitability as a site for an observatory. In addition, he valued it for the
water resources and the abundance of
timber for
construction of the university.
Prior to the renaming it had been known as Old Reservoir Mountain and Observatory Mountain (for an observatory which Jefferson directed to be built on the summit), and is now informally known as Observatory Hill.
The mountain is traversed by McCormick Road and Edgemont Road (which also runs along a neighboring ridge — Edgemont or Midmont), and is the site of several other University of Virginia buildings including a deactivated
nuclear reactor, a
linear accelerator and
dormitories. It has been
preserved in a largely
wooded
A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...
state for the protection of McCormick Observatory from
light pollution. It is used by
birdwatchers,
mountain bikers,
hikers, and students and faculty at
The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School, U.S. Army, for military physical fitness training. The headquarters for the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radio a ...
are also located on Mount Jefferson.
References
External links
*
"McCormick Observatory history"
Mountains of Virginia
Landforms of Albemarle County, Virginia
Protected areas of Albemarle County, Virginia
{{AlbemarleCountyVA-geo-stub