Hollow
A hollow is one of the generic names the federal geographic naming system files under valley: a linear depression in the Earth's surface that generally slopes from one end to the other. On a map or in a deed call, the word describes the shape of the ground; it is not a legal, zoning or survey category.
One of the words filed under valley, alongside gulch and ravine
The word hollow turns up on maps, in deed calls and in everyday talk about a piece of ground. The U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System, the federal naming system, files it as one of many generic names for a single kind of feature.
Linear depression in the Earth's surface that generally slopes from one end to the other (barranca, canyon, chasm, cirque, cove, coulee, draw, fjord, glen, gorge, gulch, gulf, gully, hollow, ravine).
USGS Geographic Names Information System, feature class definitions
That one feature class takes in every word in the parentheses, so a canyon, a gorge and a hollow are filed the same way: as ground that runs downhill from one end to the other. The generic word in a place name tells you the feature class. It does not measure the valley.
The definition says nothing about how steep the sides are, how wide the floor is or what sits on either side. It is a naming class, not a measurement, and it carries no acreage, no setback and no permit requirement of its own.
Where the word stops and the questions about the ground begin
Because hollow is never a legal, zoning or survey term, a listing or deed that uses it is describing the shape of the ground and answering none of the questions that shape raises.
The same catalog keeps other generic names for other ground. Among them are bottom and first bottom, the naming entries behind bottomland. It files a stream on its own, as a linear body of water flowing on the surface, so the valley definition does not by itself say whether water runs through a given hollow.
Where a house or a drive can go on a hollow's sides is a question of slope and grade and of aspect, the direction a slope faces, and the two are read together in slope, aspect and building. Whether one steep lot can carry a house at all is taken up in can I build on a steep lot.
If a tract's timber stands on a hollow's slopes, whether to have it measured in a timber cruise, and how a harvest is tallied in board feet, are questions the word does not touch. What a road up a hollow does to what land is worth is its own subject in how mountain roads affect what land is worth.
Have a tract that runs down into a hollow?
Send the address or a dropped pin, and Lowell will look at how the road reaches the hollow and how its slopes lie for a sale. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions about this term
Does the naming system treat a hollow differently from a ravine or a gulch?
No. Hollow, ravine and gulch are all listed in the same GNIS feature class: a linear depression in the Earth's surface that generally slopes from one end to the other. The word a given valley carries is part of its name, not a different legal meaning, and none of the three brings a zoning, survey or building rule with it.
Does a hollow always have a stream running through it?
Not by definition. The GNIS valley class describes the shape of the ground and says nothing about water, and the same system files a stream separately, as a linear body of water flowing on the Earth's surface. Whether a particular hollow carries a stream, and whether any low ground in it lies in a mapped flood hazard area, is read from the ground and the flood map, not from the name.
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.
- GNIS Domestic Names Feature Class Definitions U.S. Geological Survey