Austinville VA real estate:the Exit 19 corridor, and the ground above the New River.

An Austinville address covers two pieces of country. North is the village, on the New River in southeastern Wythe County: an old rail bed, a working quarry and house ground on a bench above the water. South of it the county line crosses, the ground becomes Carroll County, and at Interstate 77 Exit 19 it is interstate commercial land. Almost every Austinville VA real estate question is really a question about which of the two you are standing on.

The mailing address will not tell you which. The Census Bureau's geocoder, the U.S. Geological Survey's names database and Wythe County's own adopted comprehensive plan all put Austinville in Wythe County, and the plan calls it an established community adjacent to the New River in southeastern Wythe County. The ZIP runs the other way: in the Census county relationship file, 24312 holds about 25 square miles of land in Carroll against about 11 in Wythe. Probe the geocoder south down the same meridian and the answer flips from Wythe to Carroll about a mile and a half below the village. Which county the deed names is what decides who reviews a plat, who inspects the building and who assesses the land, and the offices that answer on each side are in the table further down.

The other ground faces the New River. The U.S. Geological Survey returns 2,137 feet at the Census point for Austinville, 2,131 feet at the mapped village point and 1,974 feet at the state park access down by the water. That is about 160 feet of fall inside a short drive, and it is the whole difference between a bench lot with a view, a field that drains and a river frontage question.

Wythe County still seats a planning district it calls Lead Mines, and describes the community as holding established neighborhoods, a former school and an early sewage treatment plant of historic significance. The mapped village covers about a tenth of a square mile, so the mailing area is far larger than the place on the map. Route 94 is the county arterial that runs south into Carroll County, and Lead Mine Road is the way in from the interstate.

Austinville is one of the access points on New River Trail State Park. The park's entrance directions put the access at 231 Store Hill Road, with parking open to cars and trailers, horse trailer parking, and one of only three boat ramps on the 39 miles of park that follow the river. The trail's Carroll County miles are in our Carroll County trail guide.

Some of the riverbank is public because of the mines. Virginia Energy records that more than 182 acres of the original Austinville mine site are protected inside the state park, and that in 2010 the limestone company cleaned up the property and restored 44 acres along the New River before selling part of the site to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

The plant that treats most of Carroll County's public water stands at Austinville, on the Wythe side of the line. The New River Regional Water Authority draws from the New River and treats it at a plant here rated at 4 million gallons a day, which Wythe County's plan says can be expanded to 16 million, and it serves Wythe County, Carroll County and the Town of Wytheville. From the plant a 24-inch main crosses the New River Bridge and ties into the Wythe County system at Austinville.

Locally that is the Wythe County East system, which serves Ivanhoe, Max Meadows, Grahams Forge and Austinville from the New River, Reed Creek and one well at Max Meadows. Public sewer at the village is small and old. The county's plan dates the Austinville Wastewater Treatment Plant to 1947, describes it as built from older components put in by the New Jersey Zinc Company, gives it a capacity of 20,000 gallons a day, and pairs its collection system with a repair and rehabilitation study. Ask what capacity is available before a plan leans on it: Wythe County Water and Wastewater, Wytheville, 276-223-4501.

Off the mains it is a well and a drainfield, and the counties differ in a way worth knowing before a contract. In most rural parts of Wythe County a private well supplies the water and a privately maintained septic system takes the waste, both regulated by the Virginia Department of Health. On this side of the line, VDH's Mount Rogers environmental health program says it does more than review a design: it provides direct system design services in Wythe County and one neighboring county alone. VDH's statewide application calls for "private sector evaluations and designs, unless a petition for VDH services is approved", so confirm with the Wythe County Health Department which applies to a given lot. Cross into Carroll and the design comes from the private sector for VDH to review, by an Authorized Onsite Soil Evaluator under the county's subdivision ordinance.

On a parcel with an Austinville address we settle which county the deed puts it in before anything else, then whether a main reaches it, what the soil will take, how the entrance is built and whether the tract has ever been divided. The order those come in, and why the order matters, is set out in the five things we read before we price land.

Flood is a county question with a federal answer. Wythe County's flood plain ordinance regulates uses, activities and development in the floodway and the 100-year floodplain as established by FEMA, and the official flood map for a parcel comes from the FEMA Flood Map Service Center, not from a listing sheet. Both counties publish a parcel viewer, the Wythe County GIS map and the Carroll County parcel viewer, and both are where a look starts, not where it ends. Carroll's own viewer says it first: recorded plats and deeds are the authoritative source for legal acreage and ownership.

One last place the line bites is use value taxation, and it bites hardest on timber. Carroll County enrolls forest at 20 acres; Wythe County runs the agricultural and horticultural portions only, so forest land that qualifies a mile south of the line may have no forest program to enroll in a mile north of it, unless it is land "used in agricultural and forestal production within" an agricultural or forestal district. How every locality in the footprint runs that program is on the county by county page.

So send the road name and the acreage, and say whether the parcel lies toward the river above the village or south toward Interstate 77 Exit 19. That one sentence settles which county file we pull, which health department we call and which VDOT residency takes the entrance. Lowell walks it from there, and says plainly when the answer is a call to the county rather than a number from us. Selling here runs on the same five steps as every listing we take, set out on the land selling page.