Smith Mountain Lake is a great place for a second home!

Smith Mountain Lake is a large lake southeast of Roanoke, Virginia, and southwest of Lynchburg, Virginia. The lake is 20,600 acres and has over 500 miles of shoreline. The north shore of the lake lies entirely in Bedford County. The majority of the south shore of the lake lies in Franklin County while a portion, including access to the dam, lies in Pittsylvania County.

The area lies in a broad valley nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural southwestern Virginia of the Appalachian chain. Communities around the lake include Moneta, Huddleston, Unionhall, White House, Penhook and Goodview. The Booker T. Washington National Monument is near the west end of the lake.

Smith Mountain Lake has become a popular recreational area. Fishing is very popular, especially for striped bass. The lake has hosted professional fishing tournaments. Boating, water skiing, wakeboarding, and riding personal watercraft are also common activities. The Virginia Dare, constructed to be reminiscent of a Mississippi River steamboat, offers cruises on the lake. Smith Mountain Lake State Park opened in 1983 and provided a beach and a section for swimming. Golf at one of the several nearby courses is a popular landside activity.

The lake and nearby town of Moneta were featured prominently in the 1991 movie comedy What About Bob?, starring Bill Murray, Richard Dreyfuss and Julie Hagerty. It served as the stand-in for Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the area around Smith Mountain Lake remained rural and remote with tobacco farms and other agriculture. The limited early residential developments around the lake consisted largely of small, modest houses. However, residential growth has been steady since the mid-1980s and increasingly upscale with large lakefront houses, condominiums, and communities centered around golf courses. A new urbanist style development named Mayberry Hills, after the fictional town in The Andy Griffith Show, is currently being built in Moneta. The lake has both attracted those who commute to Roanoke and Lynchburg and retirees, many of whom have relocated from the Northeast. By the late 1990s, the number and affluence of the new residents resulted in the construction of new retail and commercial developments.