One of the Commonwealth's original state parks, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and opening in 1936, it is located along the Staunton River near Scottsburg, Virginia.

[1] Construction of the park was begun (at the confluence of the Staunton and Dan Rivers) beginning in 1933; Buggs Island Lake was formed in the early 1950s.

Red Hill (the last home of Patrick Henry) and Roanoke Plantation (home of Captain Adam Clement and his son John Marshall Clemens,[citation needed] father of Samuel Clemens—Mark Twain) are two of the better-known plantations.

A fleet of freight bateaux (flatboats) operated upstream from Brookneal and downstream to Clarksville and Gaston, North Carolina.

Samuel Pannilla owned these flatboats, which bypassed the falls through channels walled in with stone masonry (forming a canal).

It was said that he could lift a 200-pound (91 kg) sack of fertilizer with his teeth and pick up a barrel full of liquor in his hands and drink out of the bunghole.

The land near the rivers was rich and fertile, and crops grew well; each year, 500–600 pounds (230–270 kg) of corn was harvested.

On August 8, 1899 J. C. Zimmerman purchased a tract of land about two miles (3 km) above the confluence of the Dan and Staunton Rivers.

However, the people knew little of the area's farming practices; the colony began to fail, and the group soon left.

In 1952, with the completion of the John H. Kerr Dam and the formation of Buggs Island Lake, part of the park was flooded.