Up a gravel drive off a back road in Pittsylvania County is a parcel of land with hills and valleys, streams, diverse vegetation and the remains of a pool deck from a house that burned down in 2015.
Right now, downed trees lie in piles, brush is being cleared and walking trails are being built as work progresses on a small, nature-focused resort called Echo Valley that will offer glamping, gardening and outdoor activities.
Bethann James and her family built what they thought would be their “forever home” on this land, which has been in her family for 136 years, in 2005. A decade later, it burned to the ground.
“From 2015 until now, we’ve just been paying taxes on that property,” James said. “The message I grew up with from my grandparents is that we need to keep the property in the family. But after our house burned, we just didn’t do anything with it.”
Earlier this year, James talked with her family — her cousins, who are co-owners of the land, and her three sons — about what to do with the property.
They came up with the idea to build a micro-resort on the land, which is in the Dry Fork part of the county, and offer a place where people can stay, be surrounded by nature and participate in outdoor activities.
Unlike hotels, micro-resorts don’t host dozens of guests at a time. They’re small-scale and usually high-end lodging options, often in natural settings, that house guests in modular units, tiny homes or cabins.
This type of stay has started to become popular in recent years, as travelers increasingly prioritize eco-friendly and sustainable tourism as well as unique travel experiences, according to Pine, a micro-lodging manufacturing company based in Michigan.
They provide different amenities than a hotel, too. James has plans to offer glamping, gardening, walking trails, farmers markets and other group activities at the micro-resort, called Echo Valley.
“We learned, while doing research about micro-resorts, which is sort of a new term, that you need to have views, you need to have water, and you need to have woods,” James said. “We have all three.”
In November, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved James’ rezoning request for the parcel, about 16.5 acres, allowing the family to build a micro-resort there.
James says it’ll be a community asset, bringing people to the county for a different type of experience than a traditional hotel, as lodging demand and tourism efforts increase in Danville and Pittsylvania.
Lisa Meriwether, Danville’s tourism director, said that Echo Valley would create a unique venue for visitors and offer an experience unlike anything in many of the region’s communities.
“The concept is visionary, combining boutique/luxury experiences, seasonal events, and a deep connection to history,” Meriwether said in an email. “These elements align perfectly with the interests of our visitors who are already drawn to our communities.”
To sell or not to sell?
Right now, James splits her time between the Dry Fork community and Durham, North Carolina.
In March, she got an offer from a buyer who wanted 3 acres of the family land, she said.
“I took it to my kids, and I said, ‘I can’t do in death what I can’t do in life, so if you’re going to sell it when I go, let’s just sell it now,’” James said.
Her children, especially her oldest son, were against selling the land, saying their grandparents wouldn’t have wanted that. They started brainstorming, “spitballing ideas” about what else they could do with the property, James said.
They considered leasing it for agricultural use or a cellphone tower, or even creating an animal sanctuary. When her oldest son suggested camping, James wasn’t sure — she’s not an outdoorsy person, she said, and prefers to stay in a hotel.
“He said, ‘No, Mom, it’s the kind of camping you would like,’” James said. “It’s what they call glamping, so it’s luxury camping, and it’s all-inclusive.”
The family did some research and found out that there isn’t a similar option within three hours of Dry Fork, James said.
As visitation to the Danville-Pittsylvania County area increases, and new chain and boutique hotels continue to come to the region, the family thought it would be the perfect time to create a different type of lodging experience.
They created a website for Echo Valley even before beginning the rezoning or permitting process, to market the idea to potential guests.
The target guest is an “experience-driven explorer,” James said. “Someone who values nature but isn’t willing to sacrifice modern comfort.”
She anticipates that most guests will be part of the millennial and Gen Z generations and come from upper-middle-class to high-income households, which usually make up most of the glamping market, she said.
“Because Echo Valley will offer high-end amenities like private hot tubs and ‘hotel-like’ plumbing, it will appeal to those with the disposable income to pay for a premium outdoor experience,” she said. “These are eco-conscious travelers and ‘digital nomads.’ They care about our off-grid energy and agritourism and might stay during the week to work remotely while immersed in nature.”
The website provides a glimpse at what will be offered at Echo Valley, including nature immersion trails and opportunities for guests to host their own retreats — yoga instruction, writing workshops, plant or environmental learning, and leadership retreats.
“We’ve already received six retreat requests for 2026, and we don’t even have one shovel in the ground,” James said.
Those requests aren’t limited to locals, she said, with one coming from the Washington, D.C., area. She’s expecting guests to come mostly from major hubs within a two- to three-hour drive, like Durham, Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina, and Hampton Roads, Richmond and Roanoke.
The project is now in the permitting process.
James said she’d like to see Echo Valley up and running by May or June, in time for the warm weather. Once it’s operational, she plans to move to Pittsylvania full time.
The first phase of the project will include five dome-shaped glamping units, with five more each in phase two and phase three. The cost to stay at Echo Valley will be between $160 and $225 per night.
“We wanted to stay small and nature-immersed,” James said. “The units will be of various sizes, two to four people, six to eight people, and then a larger unit for a family or group.”
The total project cost for the first phase is about $750,000, James said.
Turning empty land into Echo Valley
Neal Bowman, a Martinsville resident, first heard about Echo Valley while reading news coverage about the rezoning request. Bowman, who does forest ecology work, reached out to James to offer to help create some of the trails and activities.
Bowman has worked at museums, gardens, nature clubs and plant nurseries in North Carolina and Virginia, and recently helped take care of the butterfly exhibit at the Danville Science Museum.
He said he was surprised when he heard the name Echo Valley and saw that it was located in Dry Fork — he didn’t know that there were hills and valleys in that area, he said.
But once he visited the property, he was surprised by the terrain, the plants and the wildlife on the property.
“The plant species out here, there’s actually a lot of stuff that I see in the mountains,” he said.
On the property, Bowman has seen persimmon trees, running cedar — which looks like Christmas garland — deer, and turkeys. He said he expects to see box turtles when the weather warms up.
“The diversity has surprised me out here,” he said.
The fire that destroyed the Jameses’ home 10 years ago was ironically very good for nature in the area, Bowman said.
He spends about a day a week on the property but plans to be there more once the weather warms up, he said. He’s creating two walking trails at Echo Valley — an upper trail that looks over a stream and a lower trail that runs the valley.
The first step in this process is a lot like exploring in the woods.
“You’ve got to get out there and find the points of interest first,” Bowman said. “Then you’ve got to figure out how to get to those points, looking at the terrain and how the land lies.”
The trails aren’t finished yet, but they will likely both be about a mile-and-a-half long, with options for walkers to take longer or shorter routes, depending on their preference, he said.
Bowman is also laying out space for gardening and flower beds on the property.
The micro-resort will have vegetable, herb and flower gardens, James said. She wants to tie Echo Valley’s gardening and agriculture amenities with broader health and wellness efforts in the area.
Echo Valley is working to partner with the University of Virginia’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, she said.
“We want to do a cancer prevention garden for foods and produce that are cancer preventing,” she said. “We also want to offer gardening as an exercise for cancer survivors.”
These are amenities that aren’t usually offered through traditional lodging, James said. Bowman said that it’s an exciting project — for him and for eventual guests — because there aren’t many opportunities like it in the region.
“This will touch on history, agriculture and nature,” Bowman said. “A lot of places, it’s like you’re tied to either history or agriculture or nature. You don’t get to incorporate all three.”
Amenities for the community
James said she wants her neighbors in the Dry Fork community to know that this project will be beneficial to the area and won’t change its rural identity.
There was some pushback from nearby residents during the rezoning public hearings, mostly related to concerns about property values and traffic. The opponents asked the planning commission to consider these effects on the surrounding area.
“There’s research that says that nature-friendly assets and access to green spaces are a benefit to a community,” James said. “They increase property value, as opposed to decreasing property value.”
When her house was on the land, a quarter-mile off the road, it wasn’t visible to cars passing by, she said.
“Even if we built a Chuck E. Cheese up there, you wouldn’t be able to see it,” she said.
And because the resort will offer only 15 units spread over several acres, traffic should not significantly increase, James said. The small size of the project also means there won’t be much additional burden to infrastructure, she said.
She said she’s willing to talk to anyone who has questions or concerns about the project, and she encourages them to get in touch with her.
James wants to make Echo Valley’s amenities available to the community, as well as to guests.
“We’ll have a pool, you can come swim. We’ll have built-out trails, you can come walk. You can go to the pocket park and sit by the creek,” she said. “In the past, there’s been so much overgrowth and unfortunately trash and debris that people couldn’t get to it. We’re clearing that out, and people will be able to actually use it.”
She plans to partner with farmers markets and other local businesses. She expects that guests will patronize other restaurants and stores in Dry Fork.
The best part about working on the project so far has been seeing her family come together to create something that will benefit the community, James said.
“My grandmother had the first grocery store in that community. My uncle had the first car wash, and my grandparents donated the property for Bethel Way Church and were founders of St. Matthews Church,” she said. “I’m happy that this generation also gets to do something together for the community. … My son is three generations away from my grandparents, but that passion still exists in our family to be investors in the community.”