If you happened to be standing near the I-81 exit for Mt. Crawford in the early morning hours of this past June 30, you’d have witnessed a spectacle. Shoppers flooded into the parking lot and shuffled into block-long lines in hopes of being among the first through the doors of Virginia’s first Buc-ee’s travel station.
“It’s like a cult,” retired Augusta County police captain, Crystal Limerick, told a local news reporter shortly before the store opened at 6 a.m. “I’d heard so much about the place, I thought, ‘What the heck, why not go see what it’s all about?’”
The enthusiasm was rewarded with a free, bright yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the Texas-based mega chain’s grinning, red-hatted beaver logo. At 74,000 square feet, the $60 million building is about the size of a Neighborhood Market Walmart. It has everything from heavily discounted petrol to an on-site smoked barbecue restaurant, sweets and nuts station, jerky bar, gift shop area, and aisles filled with automotive or household goods of nearly every stripe.
“This is the Disneyland of gas stations,” joked Limerick. And the swarms of visitors that flock to the interstate rest stop each day appear to be in agreement.
Buc-ee’s has a cult following. Photos courtesy of Rockingham County Tourism
This article originally appeared in the Best of Virginia 2026 issue.
