Keswick has few businesses, and lacks a central business district. It is predominantly residential, with a mixture of large farms, estates, middle-income, and low-income housing. Since many of the parcels of land in Keswick are large, it is relatively undeveloped and retains its natural environment, which includes views of the Southwest Mountains. The drive through Keswick "has often been cited as one of the most scenic in America," writes the New York Times.[2] Many of the estates were plantations in the 18th century.[2] No major development took place in Keswick until the 1990s, and the development since then has been subject to strict scrutiny by Albemarle County officials.[2]
Oakland School, a special boarding and day school for children with learning disabilities, is in Keswick, as is the Keswick School, a boarding school for students with social skill and emotional struggles. A CSX freight rail line runs through the town. The Shackelford family, long prominent in Albemarle and Orange counties and in the Monticello Association,[3] has a family cemetery in Keswick.[4]
"According to its website, the Keswick Hunt Club was established in 1896 and formally recognized in 1903. There are currently about 200 individual and family memberships and the club's estimated 60 hounds hunt on land in Albemarle, Louisa, Madison and Orange counties."[7]
There is a special award given each year by the club's Masters and Huntsman in honor of an outstanding fox hound. "The "Barrister" award is named for one of Keswick's finest dog hounds who had a great nose and really deep cry and whose offspring bear his resemblance and qualities today."[8]
In 1929, John Stewart, M.F.H. instigated the first Thanksgiving Blessing of the Hounds Service in the yard of Grace Episcopal Church (Keswick, Virginia), another tradition that has continued to the present. Hounds, horses and riders gather for a religious service of prayers and hymns followed by a hunt. The collection taken at the service benefits charity.[9][10]
In film
The Keswick train station (no longer in operation) which is now part of Little Keswick School and used as a dining hall, as well as the farm of Belmont (not to be confused with East Belmont) are featured in the 1956 film Giant. The portions of the movie set in Maryland were filmed at these places in Keswick.
^Moore, John Hammond (1976). Albemarle: Jefferson's County. University Press of Virginia. ISBN0-8139-0645-8. In 1939 the Randolphs, Taylors, Keans, Shackelfords, and other descendants [of Thomas Jefferson] formed the Monticello Graveyard Association which began holding annual meetings and continues to administer the graveyard today under the name of the Monticello Association.
