About

Conspicuously located alongside the road between the town of Broadway and the city of Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, the Baxter House displays Virginia log construction at its finest. The western half of the double-pen structure has full-dovetail corner notching. The precisely fitted logs, devoid of chinking, illustrate a building method associated with the Valley's German settlers. The quality of the construction is on a par with that usually associated with fine furniture. The eastern and earlier half, has less uniformly dressed logs with regular chinking making it typical of the log construction employed by Scotch-Irish settlers. The Baxter House was built in the late 18th century for George Baxter, whose son served as one of the early presidents of Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) in Lexington.