For landowners ยท Southwest Virginia

Six counties and the City of Galax:the ground we work.

We work six counties in Southwest Virginia plus the City of Galax, and the rules change at every one of those lines. Here is each place, how you get there, what the ground and the water do, and the office a landowner calls first.

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No cost, no obligation · Straight answers · Carroll, Grayson, Wythe & more
The footprint

Seven jurisdictions, seven sets of rules

Six counties and one independent city. That is the whole map, and no two of them answer a land question the same way. Three of the six counties have no county zoning at all, and all seven have a subdivision ordinance, because Virginia requires one of every locality.

Seat: Hillsville

Carroll County

Interstate 77 runs north to south through the county, with Wildwood Commerce Park at Exit 19 and an active development corridor where the interstate meets U.S. Highway 52 at Fancy Gap.

Slightly more than half the county's land area has a slope over 20 percent, and the Eastern Continental Divide runs through it roughly along the Blue Ridge Parkway, so Chestnut Creek feeds the New River while Lovills Creek drains south into North Carolina.

Call first: Carroll County Land Use and Planning, (276) 730-3008.

Seat: Independence

Grayson County

U.S. 58 and the paired U.S. 221/21, with state routes 16, 89, 93, 94, 97 and 274, are the county's key arterial primary highways.

Forty-eight miles of the New River flow through Grayson, over 60 percent of the land has slopes in excess of 20 percent, and the Jefferson National Forest's Mount Rogers National Recreation Area runs the full length of the northern boundary.

Call first: Grayson County Planning and Community Development, whose page lists both (276) 773-2000 and (276) 773-2471.

Seat: Wytheville

Wythe County

Wythe sits at the junction of Interstate 81 and Interstate 77. U.S. Routes 11, 21 and 52 are the other arterials, with State Route 94 running south to Carroll County.

The New River crosses the center of the county alongside Reed Creek and Cripple Creek, and about 30 percent of Wythe is karst terrain, which the county's plan defines as carbonate rock at or near the land surface.

Call first: Wythe County Planning, (276) 223-4508.

Courthouse: Town of Pulaski

Pulaski County

Interstate 81 and Route 100 are the county's primary entry roads, and the Circuit Court sits at 45 Third Street NW in the Town of Pulaski.

The New River runs about 50 miles inside the county and is impounded behind Appalachian Power's 1939 hydroelectric dam as Claytor Lake. Much of Pulaski is underlain by carbonate bedrock with a karst surface.

Call first: Pulaski County Planning and Zoning, (540) 980-7710.

Seat: Christiansburg

Montgomery County

The county sits on the Interstate 81 corridor. Its own emergency operations plan names U.S. Route 460 as the primary east to west road and State Route 114 as the link west into Pulaski County, and puts elevations between 1,300 and 3,700 feet, most of the ground near 2,000.

Montgomery also runs an Agricultural and Forestal District program, roughly 25,127 acres across nine districts. A district needs a contiguous core of at least 200 acres, and the land has to be zoned A-1 Agricultural.

Call first: Montgomery County Planning and GIS Services, (540) 394-2148.

Offices: Town of Floyd

Floyd County

No interstate runs through Floyd, and there are no four-lane roads. Route 8 and U.S. Highway 221 are the main thoroughfares, their intersection in the Town of Floyd is the county's only signaled intersection, and much of the more than 600 miles of state-maintained road lacks a hard surface.

The county sits atop the Blue Ridge Plateau at generally 2,000 to 3,000 feet, so all water flows out of it: major tributaries of the New River in Big Reed Island Creek and the Little River, and headwater streams of the Dan, Smith and Roanoke.

Call first: Floyd County Planning and Economic Development, through the county's main line, (540) 745-9300.

Independent city

City of Galax

Galax is part of no county. It sits between Carroll and Grayson about nine miles west of Interstate 77 Exit 14 on U.S. Highway 58, and it runs its own planning, building, assessment and utility offices out of the Municipal Building on East Grayson Street. The streets inside the city are maintained by the city, with partial funding from VDOT.

Chestnut Creek runs through Galax carrying a 100-year floodplain that bisects the city.

Call first: Galax Codes, Compliance and Zoning, (276) 293-1717.

The zoning answer

What each locality has actually adopted

Zoning in Virginia is permissive. Va. Code 15.2-2280 says a locality may classify its territory into districts, not that it must, which is why three of these counties regulate land through the subdivision ordinance and the building permit instead. The subdivision ordinance runs the other way: Va. Code 15.2-2240 requires every locality to adopt one.

County zoning and subdivision ordinances across the six counties and the City of Galax
LocalityCounty zoning ordinance?Subdivision ordinance
CarrollNo. A draft was tabled by the Planning Commission.Yes, Chapter 216 Subdivision of Land in the county's online code
GraysonYes. Rural Farm is the default district for unincorporated land.Yes. Class I is 15 lots or more, Class II under 15.
WytheNo countywide zoning. A Land Use Classification Ordinance is in draft, Draft 4.02 of August 2026, and is not adopted. Only Wytheville and Rural Retreat are zoned.Yes, dated 2012 in the comprehensive plan's ordinance table
PulaskiYes, the Unified Development Ordinance, adopted October 26, 2015, amended July 27, 2025.Yes, in the same document
MontgomeryYes, county code Chapter 10.Yes, county code Chapter 8, Article IV. Minor is 10 lots or fewer, major is 11 or more.
FloydNo county-wide zoning.Yes, the Land Division Ordinance, adopted November 18, 2025, effective January 1, 2026
City of GalaxYes, Chapter 160 of the city code, adopted November 12, 1985.Yes in practice, but the chapter number is unverified. Confirm with the city.
Every line comes from the locality's own published page, code or adopted plan, listed in the sources below. Drafts get adopted: where the table says a document is in draft or a number is unverified, confirm with the county before you rely on it.
Why the county line matters

The line decides which office answers

Two tracts a mile apart on either side of a county line can face a different permit desk, a different assessment program, a different VDOT residency and a different health district. Those four maps do not agree with each other, which is the trap: never infer one boundary from another.

Who issues the permit

The building permit comes from the locality's own building office, and in Grayson that office also permits inside Independence, Fries and Troutdale. What has to come first changes by line. Grayson wants an approved county zoning permit, and property taxes current with the Treasurer, before a permit issues. Wythe will not issue a permit on a lot divided in conflict with an applicable ordinance, and wants the septic permit for a single-family dwelling, and the entrance permit when a new driveway is cut off a state-maintained road, in hand first. Floyd, with no zoning, sets the distances from the road and from the property lines through the building permit itself.

Who assesses the land

Use-value taxation values qualifying agricultural, horticultural, forest or open-space real estate considering only the indicia of value it has for that use and the State Land Evaluation Advisory Council's recommendations, rather than its fair market value. It is a local option under Va. Code 58.1-3231, and the Commissioner of the Revenue runs it. Carroll takes agricultural and horticultural land at 5 acres and forest at 20. Wythe participates in the agricultural and horticultural portions only, and its FAQ gives the example that subdividing twelve acres into four three-acre lots brings rollback taxes on the subdivided portions. Floyd's program covers agriculture and horticulture. Pulaski and Montgomery both run one. Grayson publishes no adopted program, and Virginia Tech's use-value estimates list no use-value assessment ordinance for Grayson or for the City of Galax, so confirm with Grayson's Commissioner of the Revenue at (276) 773-2381 or the Galax Commissioner of Revenue at (276) 236-2528. Under Va. Code 58.1-3231, land "used in agricultural and forestal production within" an agricultural district, a forestal district or an agricultural and forestal district established under Chapter 43 of Title 15.2 is eligible whether or not a local land-use plan or ordinance has been adopted. Application windows are not the same date everywhere: most fall between October and December, and in a reassessment year Montgomery's deadline runs to 30 days after the reassessment notice is mailed.

Who takes the entrance permit

A new drive cut off a state-maintained road needs a VDOT entrance permit, and the residency that takes it does not follow the planning map. Carroll County is Salem District and goes to the Martinsville Residency in Bassett, (276) 629-2581. Grayson and Wythe are Bristol District and go to the Wytheville Residency, (276) 228-2153. Floyd, Montgomery and Pulaski go to the Christiansburg Residency, (540) 381-7201. The pairings are on VDOT's own district and residency roster, which lists Galax among the Salem District cities without naming a residency for it. Inside the Galax city limits the streets are maintained by the city with partial VDOT funding, so start with the city.

Who permits the septic and the well

Septic and private well permits are a Virginia Department of Health function, not a county one, and the health district splits the footprint a third way. Carroll, Grayson, Wythe and Galax are served by the Mount Rogers Health District, headquartered in Marion, with a health department office in each. Floyd, Montgomery and Pulaski are in the New River Health District, headquartered at the Montgomery County Health Department in Christiansburg. Outside the served water and sewer areas, which is most of this ground, a parcel is on a private well and an onsite septic system.

Where to go next

Start with the parcel, not the county

The county line tells you which office answers. It does not tell you whether one tract can be built on, divided or served, and that is a parcel question: access, utilities, topography, soil and zoning. For the method, see how we read land. For what a subdivision or feasibility read involves, see land development and feasibility. If the tract is yours, selling land runs the same five steps as every listing.

Public water and sewer here reach named service areas and then stop, and everything outside them is a private well and an onsite septic system. Which side of that line a parcel falls on is a town question, so we keep a page for each of the towns we serve, starting with Hillsville, Austinville, Woodlawn and Galax. If the question is about one parcel, call Lowell and name the road.

County pages

One page per county

Carroll County VA real estate sorted by the divide, the rock and the riverCarroll County VA real estate sorted by ground and water: the divide along the Parkway, the escarpment, the New River reach and each town page's USGS gage.Floyd County VA real estate sorted by where the water goesFloyd County VA real estate by the ground: the escarpment edge, which way the water drains, where PSA pipe reaches, and the lot rule that follows it.
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Questions

Good questions, straight answers.

Which localities in this footprint have no zoning ordinance?

Carroll, Wythe and Floyd have no county zoning ordinance. Wythe has a Land Use Classification Ordinance in draft that has not been adopted, and Carroll's own draft was tabled by its Planning Commission. Grayson, Pulaski and Montgomery are zoned, and so is the City of Galax. All seven localities have a subdivision ordinance, because Virginia requires every locality to adopt one.

Who issues the driveway entrance permit for a new lot here?

VDOT does, through the residency that covers the locality, and the residencies do not follow the planning map. Carroll County goes to the Martinsville Residency in Bassett. Grayson and Wythe go to the Wytheville Residency. Floyd, Montgomery and Pulaski go to the Christiansburg Residency. In Wythe, when a new driveway is cut off a state-maintained road, the entrance permit has to be in hand before the county will take a building permit application, so the order you do things in matters.

Is the City of Galax handled differently from the six counties?

Yes. Galax is an independent city, part of neither Carroll nor Grayson, so a parcel inside the city never reaches a county office. Zoning is Chapter 160 of the city code, the Building Official is also the floodplain permit authority, and a new or relocating business has to clear zoning and building code review before it can get a business license. One thing does cross the line: Twin County E-911 dispatches for Carroll, Galax and Grayson.

Sources

Where this page's facts come from

Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.

Keep reading

Also on this site

The towns we serve, and the ground each one sits on.One page per town: the corridors that reach Hillsville, Austinville, Galax and Woodlawn, where public water stops, and which office reads a plat on each side of a line.How we read landThe five-factor method, factor by factor, with the Virginia rule and the office behind each one.Land development and feasibility: what the ground will actually allow.Land development feasibility in Southwest Virginia: the subdivision, plat, VDOT entrance, stormwater and septic rules that decide what a tract can hold.Sell Your LandLand listing and acreage selling