Eddie asks if cotton was ever grown in southwest Va.? While cotton will grow in this area, I don't believe it was ever grown commercially here. Flax was the fiber crop of choice in the mountains..Old records in Wythe county list the amount of flax and "rotted flax" people had..I don't know the process, but apparently the flax was "broken" and allowed to rot in order to extract the fibers..I saw a "contraption" at an old house in Smyth County, Va. when I was about nine years old and my mother told me it was a "flax breaker" so apparently she had seen them before.. I imagine that weavers during that time made fine linen to sell from the flax.. On Shipping cattle: Just as they did in the old west, early settlers had cattle drives and "drove" their cattle to markets which had developed to the east..Daniel Boone and the Bryans and other settlers drove cattle from the Yadkin River Valley over Blue Ridge Mountain and all the way to Powell Valley, a very long journey in 1774.. When I was a teenager, we shipped cattle by railroad to Baltimore for sale..There was a stockyard and loading ramp at Wyndale, Va. at that time.. G. Lee Hearl Abingdon, Va.