Baywood is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Grayson County, in the southwestern part of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. It was first listed as a CDP in the 2020 census with a population of 414.

History

Baywood was established as a hub community, roughly embracing the area from Meadow Creek, Edmonds, NC, Little River and New River. The area was settled in the late 18th century by several families with land grants from the revolutionary war. The nearest town was Fries, VA until Galax, VA was established in 1905. Baywood was known as Hampton Crossroads until a post office was established there in 1903. Mail was often mixed up with mail meant for Hampton's Roads, and as a result, Hampton Crossroads became known as Baywood. Arch Moore, postmaster, named the community Baywood after a tree growing in the area called the Bay Tree. After 1937, the Baywood post office was closed and mail services transferred to the Galax post office. The first 'board and telephone system' was installed for the community in 1909. This service was transferred to Inter-Mountain Telephone in 1957. The first school built in the community was a wooden structure with four classrooms on the first floor and an auditorium on the second floor. This school opened in the fall of 1913. This school was replaced by the current school in 1953.

Culture

The singers of the Cross Roads

Primitive Baptist Primitive Baptists – also known as Regular Baptists, Old School Baptists, Foot Washing Baptists, or, derisively, Hard Shell Baptists – are conservative Baptists adhering to a degree of Calvinist beliefs who coalesced out of the contr ...

Church are featured on the 1978 LP ''Children of the Heav'nly King: Religious Expression in the Central Blue Ridge'' (recordings from the

Blue Ridge Parkway The Blue Ridge Parkway is a National Parkway and National Scenic Byway, All-American Road in the United States, noted for its scenic beauty. The parkway, which is the longest linear park in the U.S., runs for through 29 counties in Virginia and ...

Folklife Project conducted by the

American Folklife Center The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a rep ...

in cooperation with the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

, ed. Charles K. Wolfe), singing the hymn "Children of the Heav'nly King." The old-time

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

player Haywood Blevins was recorded at Baywood by Peter Hoover on August 25, 1961, and the banjo player James Spencer Caudill was recorded at his home in Baywood by Blanton Owen on March 21, 1974; both of these recordings are housed at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

's Archive of Folk Culturebr>

Demographics

Baywood first appeared as a

census designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in the 2020 U.S. Census.

References

External links

Baywood, Virginia page
History Reference: Baywood, Published in 1990 by the Gazette Press, Inc., Galax, Va {{Coord, 36, 36, 37, N, 81, 00, 43, W, type:city_region:US-VA_source:GNIS-enwiki, display=title Unincorporated communities in Grayson County, Virginia Unincorporated communities in Virginia Census-designated places in Grayson County, Virginia Census-designated places in Virginia