“Love of the Mountains” is a modern bluegrass standard written by Allen Mills, the founding bass player of the Virginia-based bluegrass band Lost & Found. The band was formed in 1973 with an original lineup of Mills (bass), Gene Parker (banjo), Dempsey Young (mandolin), and Roger Handy (guitar), and the group quickly became fixtures on the bluegrass festival circuit through the 1970s.
The song was written and first recorded by Lost & Found on their debut album in 1975, and it became the band’s signature number — described in retrospect as the song that helped cement their reputation as a group to be reckoned with in the Virginia–Tennessee bluegrass scene. Its lyrical premise — the mountains as the singer’s enduring love, more constant than any human attachment — became one of the more durable expressions of the homesick-Appalachian theme that runs through the bluegrass canon.
“Love of the Mountains” has been described as a perennial royalty earner for Mills, an indication of how widely the song has been covered and how reliably it stays in the active jam-session repertoire decades after its release. It has been recorded by numerous acts since and remains a regular feature in contemporary bluegrass sets.
