Overlooks
24 places · Summit views & panoramas
Potomac, MD
Great Falls - Billy Goat Trail
The Great Falls of the Potomac is one of the most dramatic waterfall scenes in the eastern US - churning whitewater rapids cutting through billion-year-old Mather Gorge.
McLean, VA
Great Falls Park
The Virginia side of Great Falls offers more dramatic overlook perspectives of the churning Potomac gorge than the Maryland side, with three overlooks at different heights.
Dickerson, MD
Sugarloaf Mountain
A privately maintained monadnock rising 800 feet from the Piedmont Plateau, Sugarloaf offers panoramic views of the Monocacy Valley and Blue Ridge foothills.
Sperryville, VA
Old Rag Mountain
One of the most popular hikes on the East Coast rewards with a bare granite summit rising above the Blue Ridge - 360-degree views including every surrounding ridge.
Luray, VA
Hawksbill Summit
Shenandoah's highest peak at 4,051 feet offers a classic cliff-top perspective over the Shenandoah Valley - the stone wall summit platform frames the view perfectly.
Harrisonburg, VA
Reddish Knob
At 4,397 feet, Reddish Knob is one of the highest accessible peaks in Virginia - a grassy bald summit with a 360-degree panorama spanning the Shenandoah Valley, Allegheny highlands, and on clear days, the Blue Ridge.
Boonsboro, MD
South Mountain State Battlefield
A forgotten Civil War battlefield on a mountain ridge offers dramatic Blue Ridge panoramas and the Washington Monument State Park - Maryland's version built by locals in 1827.
Luray, VA
Skyline Drive - Hogback Overlook
One of Skyline Drive's highest and most expansive overlooks faces west over Page Valley and Massanutten Mountain - a scene that looks unchanged since the Appalachians formed.
Woodstock, VA
Shenandoah Valley Floor
The Woodstock Tower on Massanutten Mountain gives a bird's-eye view of the Shenandoah River's seven oxbow bends - a geological and photographic spectacle unique in the eastern US.
Baltimore, MD
Federal Hill Park
The best free viewpoint of the Baltimore skyline rises 80 feet above the Inner Harbor - a grassy hilltop in a Federal-era neighborhood with postcard panoramas.
Arlington, VA
Netherlands Carillon
A 127-foot steel tower gift from the Netherlands sits on a hilltop with arguably the finest unobstructed view of the DC skyline and National Mall available from Virginia.
Luray, VA
Stony Man Trail
The shortest trail to a Shenandoah summit climbs 0.8 miles through the park's largest remaining old-growth red spruce forest to exposed cliff-top western views.
Front Royal, VA
Compton Peak
An undervisited Shenandoah summit accessible via a short hike from the north entrance of Skyline Drive, offering basalt column formations and valley views toward Front Royal and the Shenandoah Valley.
Sharpsburg, MD
Antietam National Battlefield
The bloodiest single-day battle in American history left behind a landscape of solemnity and beauty - rolling cornfields, stone bridges, and cannons beneath vast open skies.
Washington DC, DC
Old Post Office Tower
The clock tower of the Old Post Office Pavilion, now part of the Trump International Hotel, offers one of DC's best 360-degree views from its 270-foot observation deck - totally free and almost always uncrowded.
Manassas, VA
Manassas National Battlefield
Rolling Virginia farmland where two pivotal Civil War battles were fought - stone walls, Henry Hill, and vast open fields create a haunting pastoral landscape.
Delaplane, VA
Sky Meadows State Park
Rolling pastures and split-rail fences climb to Blue Ridge ridge-top trails with sweeping views of the Virginia Piedmont - it's what the East Coast imagines when it pictures Virginia.
Fredericksburg, VA
Chatham Manor
A 1771 Georgian mansion used as a Union headquarters commands a bluff with one of the finest landscape views in Virginia - the Rappahannock valley spread beneath Fredericksburg.
Arlington, VA
Virginia Highlands Park Overlook
A small hilltop park on the Arlington ridge gives a surprisingly clear view of the Georgetown University spires and DC skyline framed by mature oaks.
Haymarket, VA
Bull Run Mountains Natural Area
The easternmost ridge of the Blue Ridge provides surprising wilderness just 30 miles from DC - rocky outcrops, old-growth cedar, and views over the Northern Virginia Piedmont.
Woodstock, VA
Woodstock Tower
A stone lookout tower on Massanutten Mountain's First Peak provides one of the most dramatic views in the Shenandoah Valley - the river curves in an oxbow visible from the 2,600-foot summit.
Davis, WV
Dolly Sods Wilderness
A high plateau wilderness of wind-sculpted red spruce, heath barrens, and rocky outcrops at 4,000 feet - the closest thing to a Canadian boreal landscape in the mid-Atlantic, with expansive sky and wildly exposed terrain.
Flintstone, MD
Green Ridge State Forest
Maryland's largest state forest covers 44,000 acres of the Allegheny Front ridge and valley system - long mountain ridges, deep hollows, and the Potomac River gorge below create a wilderness character rare this close to the East Coast.
Luray, VA
Blackrock Summit
A unique quartzite talus summit in the southern section of Shenandoah National Park - a sea of grey angular boulders stretching to the horizon with no trees, creating an otherworldly lunar landscape above the valley.