It was reasonably routine at first - until it became a nightmare no one could wake from. On the evening of October 30, 1959, Piedmont Airlines Flight 349, a Douglas DC-3 bound for Roanoke with stops in Charlottesville and Lynchburg, departed Washington, DC, at 7.49pm, about 20 minutes late.

On board were 27 people (24 passengers and three crew) and the skies were cool and low-clouded. According to survivor E. Philip Bradley – the only person to walk away from what came next – plane passengers had just been "laughing merrily" in their seats before tragedy hit.

Mr Bradley recalled: "Then a scraping sound 'like the roaring of an ocean', followed by a bright light that had momentarily illuminated the steep, rugged terrain of Buck's Elbow Mountain. And just as quickly, all was swallowed up in darkness."

Minutes later the aircraft's right wing tore through 180 feet of treetops, then it slammed head-on into the 30-degree up-slope of Buck's Elbow Mountain, around 500 feet below its 3,100‐foot summit. The wreckage laid in dense woods and one witness described hearing a "drum thrown against a rock" when the crash happened.

Bradley, injured and trapped in the fuselage, recounted the horror of his first hours: "From the time of impact until I'm getting dirt and leaves in my mouth, I had a vision of Christ standing there. He was standing about three to four feet off the ground.

"I felt fine. I didn't think that I was hurt until about five or 10 minutes. Then I checked myself. My left foot was going the opposite of my right foot. That first night I was in too much pain, it was about 38 degrees that night. Pretty chilly."

The rescue was hampered by fog, rain and steep terrain. The official Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) report described it as "disorganised chaos" in the search efforts. Helicopters and ground crews combed the woods and Buzzards gathered above the wreck site by Sunday morning. Bradley recalled to Crozet Gazette: "One buzzard came in early and looked around and left. An hour or less after he left, 60 or 70 buzzards landed on the limbs all around through there."

In those hours and days, local residents E.B. Hicks and his wife Naomi knew something tragic had happened. "It was 8:36 in the evening… I heard it just plain as day. And I knew something had hit the mountain," Naomi recalled.

The crash claimed the lives of 26 of the 27 aboard – the full crew and most passengers. Bradley's survival was nothing short of miraculous. He later reflected: "I have thousands of people ask me how come I survived. My response is always, 'The good Lord made that decision and I can't have any feelings one way or another, me being the only one that lived – because Christ made that decision, not me'."

In the decades since, the crash has remained part of the local memory of Albemarle County and the Blue Ridge foothills. In 1999, Bradley designed and helped place a permanent memorial at Mint Springs Valley Park to honour those who perished.