Stokes County > Visiting Stokes County

The Dan River is about 200 miles long and 200,000,000 years old. The Dan River begins from its springs on Belcher Mountain in Virginia, and completes its journey at Kerr Lake, again in Virginia, not far from South Boston. This journey of the Dan River is told most eloquently in “The Dan River Book, Odyssey, Epic, Guide” by Forrest Altman, and available at the Dan River Art Market in Danbury.

About 1.1 miles downstream from Flippin Road Bridge, the most upstream crossing of the Dan River in Stokes County, the Dan River narrows, its broad flood plain disappearing, the gorge deepening, the gradient increasing. There follows a series of rapids with a total length of nearly a quarter of a mile culminating in the first of two Class 3 rapids in Stokes County.

Below Joyce’s Mill Road the river takes a placid two-mile “S” around Big Dan Lake, a recreational facility owned by an association of private landowners, before heading again southeasterly. Entering another broad flood plain, it is joined from river left by the Little Dan, a good trout stream from April to August. For another two miles the river is placid; the current slows in the slack water above Jessup Mill Dam.

Jessup Mill, river right upstream from the Collinstown Road bridge was built in 1910 as Union Mills.

The section of the Dan River from Jessup Mill to Highway 704 is fairly short, only six miles. It may, however, seem longer, for you’ll be busy dodging rocks. This section has the most continuous “white water” and arguably the most beautiful, remote and wild scenery of any North Carolina section of the Dan River. Water levels in this section are heavily dependent on recent rainfall.