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It has an area of 2,479 square miles (6,421 sq. km.) and the population is around 148,000. Dumfries and Galloway covers the traditional counties of Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Dumfriesshire. Together Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire are referred to as Galloway. The Galloway part of the region is made up of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, the Machars and the Rhins. The Dumfries part includes the Inner Solway and the former county of Dumfriesshire.

In Dumfries And Galloway there are the popular towns of Port Logan, Port William, Castle Douglas, Dumfries, Gretna and Stranraer.

Geography

To the north it borders onto South Ayrshire, East Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire; in the east the Borders; and to the south the county of Cumbria in England. It lies to the north of the Solway Firth and to the east of the Irish Sea. The area is characterized by an indented coastline, including Luce Bay and Wigtown Bay, backed by a low-lying coastal strip of varying width; intensively forested in the Galloways. Much of the inland area is upland east to west this includes Eskdalemuir (Hart Fell 2,651 feet), the Lowther Hills (Green Lowther 2,402 feet) and the Galloway Hills (the Merrick 2,766 feet)

Industry

Timber, chemicals, food processing, tourism, beef and dairy cattle, sheep, forestry. Some 30% of Scotland's dairy cattle come from Dumfries and Galloway and textiles, engineering and food processing are important industries and it has the ferry port of Stranraer.

History

It was created in 1975 as a two-tier region with the districts Annandale and Eskdale, Nithsdale, Stewartry, and Wigtown. These districts were abolished in 1996, and Dumfries and Galloway became a unitary authority. It has many associations with Robert Burns who lived there in the 1790s.