The Rappahannock River rises at Chester Gap, a wind gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains a few miles southeast of Front Royal, Virginia, near the single point where Warren, Fauquier, and Rappahannock counties come together. It flows southeastward, past Remington, Kelly's Ford, and Richardsville, before it is joined by the Rapidan River, its largest tributary, from the right. Then the Rappahannock passes through the city of Fredericksburg. Southeast of Fredericksburg, it begins to slow and widen into a brackish tidal estuary approximately long. It passes two small, but historic, river towns, Port Royal and Port Conway, which developed opposite each other, the former on the south bank, the latter on the north. Then it flows past Tappahannock on its southern bank, a point where the river is well over a mile wide. The last settlements of any size before it reaches the Chesapeake Bay are Irvington, Urbanna, Stingray Point, and White Stone Beach.