"Hidden away in the Shenandoah Valley, "Valleyville" is considered by many to be Central Virginia's own twist on the legendary "Area 51." Like its famous counterpart, Valleyville is an off-limits region whose only access roads are gated and guarded, whose perimeter is electronically sealed and monitored, and whose existence itself is denied by the government. Unlike Area 51, however, Valleyville serves an entirely different purpose. There are no runways at Valleyville and no top-secret aircraft being tested in the middle of the night, and there are most certainly no pieces of UFO wreckage or frozen alien corpses secreted away there. Instead, Valleyville is by all outward appearances a town...a seemingly self-contained town which for all intents and purposes is sealed off from the rest of the world. Tucked away in a nook-and-cranny of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley, there is no vantage point in Valleyville from which another town or even a road can be seen. Likewise, it is nearly impossible for the outside world to peer into Valleyville, and airspace within three miles of the town's center is restricted.
Shown above is a rare photo of the town, a very fuzzy image taken several years ago with an extreme telephoto lens by a daring soul who ignored sternly-worded warning signs and who braved barbed wire to reach a distant vantage point. What is the purpose of Valleyville? There is much speculation, but the running consensus is that Valleyville is in all probability some form of international (or possibly internal) political "detainment center." A Charlottesville newspaper in 1994 hired former Navy Seal Peter McGowan to infiltrate Valleyville and uncover its secrets, but after acknowledging initial entry, radio contact was broken and McGowan was never heard from again. Efforts are ongoing to bring down the shroud of secrecy surrounding the town, but for the time being, Valleyville remains the "Town That Doesn't Exist."
