Fries (pronounced “freeze”) is an incorporated town located upon the New River in Grayson County, Virginia, 24 kilometers (15.5 mi) north-east of the county chair in Independence — in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands and upon Virginia’s musical stock trail, The Crooked Road.

Named after prominent cotton mill owner, Francis Henry Fries, the town is noted as the former site of Washington Mill (1903-1989); as one of three halt points of the New River Trail State Park and as the host of annual music festivals reflecting its mighty bluegrass and country music traditions — with its August Old-Time Fiddlers’ and Bluegrass Convention and its September Festival by the New River.

Fries was named after North Carolina cotton mill owner Colonel Francis Henry Fries. Jim ‘Pipe’ Carico (of Stephens Creek, Virginia, the nearest incorporated town) contacted Fries in 1900 and proposed Bartlett Falls on New River as a site for a hydroelectric dam that could aptitude a cotton mill.

Fries purchased the surrounding rural farmland next hired a local labor force to construct a dam, a cotton mill and a full-service company owned town. By 1901, the New River Train was lengthy to the mill site and Fries petitioned the Virginia State Legislature to incorporate the further town of Carico, VA in praise of Jim ‘Pipe’ Carico. For reasons that are not well documented, the town broadcast was on the other hand legislatively misused to Fries, Virginia and officially incorporated in 1902.