Editing Pound, Virginia (section)

==History==
The Pound area was explored in 1751 by [[Christopher Gist]], and it is traditionally said to be the oldest settlement in Wise County.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Pound, Virginia Historical Marker |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=90779 |access-date=May 24, 2022 |website=www.hmdb.org |language=en}}</ref> Also known as "The Pound," the name may derive from a family name, or from a pounding mill built in the area in 1815. The county's first [[post office]] was established there in 1848. Pound was not [[Incorporated town|incorporated]] until 1950, the last town in Wise County to do so.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news |last=Schneider |first=Gregory S. |date=May 23, 2022 |title=Va. lawmakers voted to dissolve a troubled town. Can residents save it? |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/23/pound-virginia-town-disappear/ |access-date=May 24, 2022}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

Historically, the town's economy benefited from the area's [[coal mining]] industry. In the 1940s, the town had nearly a dozen bars catering to miners from nearby [[Kentucky]]. As mining declined in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Pound—like much of [[Southwest Virginia]]—saw its economy and tax base collapse.<ref name=":1" /> Over the following decades, fiscal and political difficulties led the [[Virginia General Assembly]] to pass a law in 2022 that would revoke the town's [[charter]] in 2023 unless improvements were made.<ref name=":1" /> Its charter was restored on February 2, 2023.<ref name="wp"/>

The [[Flat Gap High School]] and [[Sunnydale Farm]] are listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]].<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref>

=== Notable crimes ===
On November 30, 1927, Leonard Woods, a black coal miner and resident of [[Jenkins, Kentucky]], was lynched on the Virginia-Kentucky border in Pound. Woods had been jailed in Kentucky for the murder of 29-year-old Herschel Deaton of [[Coeburn, Virginia]], following an altercation on November 27.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://sites.jmu.edu/valynchings/va1927113001/|title=Leonard Woods in Wise Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia, 1877-1927|language=en-US|access-date=June 22, 2019|archive-date=June 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190622191349/https://sites.jmu.edu/valynchings/va1927113001/|url-status=live}}</ref> On the night of the lynching, a crowd estimated between 400-500 surrounded the Kentucky jail Woods was held in and demanded he be released to their custody. The crowd then transported Woods to a wooden structure located in Pound adjacent to the recently constructed [[U.S. Route 23|US 23]] highway. By this time the mob, estimated at 1,500, oversaw the hanging of Woods, followed by the firing of over 500 shots at his body, according to a local reporter. Both Virginia and Kentucky authorities claimed they were not responsible for investigating the crime, and no one was prosecuted for the death of Leonard Woods.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Leidholdy|first=Alexander|title="Never Thot This Could Happen in the South!" the|date=Winter 2011|journal=Appalachian Journal|volume=38|issue=2/3|pages=198–232|jstor=41320297}}</ref>

In 1935, Pound gained national attention for the case of [[Edith Maxwell]], who was convicted in 1935 of murdering her father, Trigg Maxwell. She was pardoned in 1941 after appeals from [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] and the ''[[Washington Post]]'' raised funds for her legal defense.