Altavista is an incorporated town in Campbell County, Virginia, United States. The population was 3,450 at the 2010 census. It is share of the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The town of Altavista was created in 1905 during the construction of the east-west Tidewater Railway amid Giles County (on the affix with West Virginia) and Sewell’s Point in what was at the epoch Norfolk County. Planned by Campbell County native William Nelson Page and financier and industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers, the Tidewater Railway was combined as soon as the Deepwater Railway in West Virginia to form the additional Virginian Railway in 1907. Although it was a common carrier and offered limited passenger give support to until 1956, the main mean of the Virginian Railway was to haul bituminous coal from the mountains to coal piers upon the ice-free harbor of Hampton Roads.

Lane Brothers Construction Company was the contractor for constructing 32 miles (51 km) of the Tidewater Railway, including its crossing of the existing north-south Southern Railway in Campbell County. Three Lane brothers purchased 2,000 acres (8.1 km) of land near the point where the railroads would intersect, and had civil engineers lay out a other town with streets and lots, complete in the reveal of water, sewer, telephone service, and electric lines. Settlement was encouraged by the awarding of free lots. Named for the Lane intimates farm in Albemarle County, the additional town of Altavista was incorporated in 1912.

The former Virginian Railway became allocation of the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1959, and it and the Southern Railway were combine in the into the future 1980s to form the current Norfolk Southern Railway. Now operated by the thesame company, both railroad lines are yet very alert in the Altavista area.