Willis Mountain is a narrow ridge of kyanite quartzite in Buckingham County, Virginia, about two miles long with steep rocky slopes rising some 150 meters above the adjacent valley to an elevation of 353 meters. The ridge originated as volcanic and volcanic-derived sediment that was hydrothermally altered by acidic fluids and then metamorphosed under high pressure and temperature into a rock unusually rich in kyanite, a mineral resistant enough to weathering that the ridge stands well above the surrounding, less resistant metamorphic terrain, its exposed rock characteristically etched with pits and furrows. Willis Mountain holds the largest of the region's kyanite deposits and has been mined since 1957.
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