Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

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Sep 13, 2007

City official name :Roanoke
Founded date :
Location :Virginia State
Elavation :? ft (? m)
Area :Approximately ? square miles (? km²).
Facts :Roanoke is an independent city located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The city of Roanoke is adjacent to the city of Salem and the town of Vinton and is otherwise surrounded by, but politically separate from, Roanoke County. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 94,911. The city is bisected by the Roanoke River. Roanoke is the commercial, cultural, and medical hub of much of the surrounding area of Virginia and southern West Virginia.

The United States Census Bureau includes in Roanoke's metropolitan area the counties of Botetourt, Franklin, Craig and Roanoke, and the cities of Salem and Roanoke. The metropolitan area's population in the past three censuses has been reported to be:

1980 --- 220,393
1990 --- 224,477
2000 --- 235,932
2005 (estimate) --- 292,983
Please note that the figures through 2000 do not include Franklin County (50,345 est. 2005 population) and Craig County (5,154 est. 2005 population) which were recently added to the Roanoke MSA, which is the fourth largest in Virginia (behind the Greater Richmond area, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads) and the largest outside of the eastern half of the state.

Incorporation
The town of Big Lick was established in 1852 and chartered in 1874. It was named for a large outcropping of salt which drew the wildlife to the site near the Roanoke River. It became the town of Roanoke in 1882 and was chartered as the independent city of Roanoke in 1884. The name Roanoke is said to have originated from an Algonquin word for shell "money", but the town was almost certainly renamed for the river that bisected it and the county that had surrounded it since 1838. It grew frequently through annexation through the middle of the twentieth century. However, the last annexation was in 1976 and Virginia cities are currently prohibited from annexing land from adjacent counties. Its location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the middle of the Roanoke Valley between Maryland and Tennessee, made it the transportation hub of western Virginia and contributed to its rapid growth.

Colonial influence
During colonial times the site of Roanoke was an important hub of trails and roads. The Great Wagon Road, one of the most heavily travelled roads of eighteenth century America, ran from Philadelphia through the Shenandoah Valley to the future site of the City of Roanoke, where the Roanoke River passed through the Blue Ridge. The Roanoke Gap proved a useful route for immigrants to settle the Carolina Piedmont region. At Roanoke Gap, another branch of the Great Wagon Road, the Wilderness Road, continued southwest to Tennessee and Kentucky.

Railroads and coal
In the 1850s, Big Lick became a stop on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T) which linked Lynchburg with Bristol on the Virginia-Tennessee border.

After the American Civil War (1861-1865), William Mahone, a civil engineer and hero of the Battle of the Crater, was the driving force in the linkage of 3 railroads, including the V&T, across the southern tier of Virginia to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol, Virginia in 1870. However, the Financial Panic of 1873 wrecked the AM&O's finances. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when northern financial interests took control. At the foreclosure auction, the AM&O was purchased by E.W. Clark and Co., a private banking firm in Philadelphia which controlled the Shenandoah Valley Railroad then under construction up the valley from Hagerstown, Maryland. The AM&O was renamed Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W).

Frederick J. Kimball, a civil engineer and partner in the Clark firm, headed the new line and the new Shenandoah Valley Railroad. For the junction for the Shenandoah Valley and the Norfolk and Western roads, Kimball and his board of directors selected the small Virginia village called Big Lick, on the Roanoke River. Although the grateful citizens offered to rename their town "Kimball", on his suggestion, they agreed to go with Roanoke after the river. As the N&W brought people and jobs, the Town of Roanoke quickly became an independent city in 1884. In fact, Roanoke became a city so quickly that it earned the nickname "Magic City."

Kimball, whose interest in geology was responsible for the opening of the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and West Virginia, pushed N&W lines through the wilds of West Virginia, north to Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio, and south to Durham, North Carolina and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This gave the railroad the route structure it was to use for more than 60 years.

The Virginian Railway (VGN), an engineering marvel of its day, was conceived and built by William Nelson Page and Henry Huttleston Rogers. Following the Roanoke River, the VGN was built through the City of Roanoke early in the twentieth century. It was merged with the N&W in 1959.

The opening of the coalfields made N&W prosperous and Pocahontas bituminous coal world-famous. Transported by the N&W and neighboring Virginian Railway (VGN), it fueled half the world's navies and today stokes steel mills and power plants all over the globe. The N&W was famous for manufacturing steam locomotives in-house. It was Norfolk & Western's Roanoke Shops, that made the company known industry-wide for its excellence in steam power. The Roanoke Shops, with its workforce of thousands, is where the famed classes A, J, and Y6 locomotives were designed, built, and maintained, and new steam locomotives were built there until 1953, long after diesel-electric had emerged as the motive power of choice for most North American railroads. Around 1960, N&W was the last major railroad in the United States to convert from steam to diesel motive power.

The presence of the railroad also made Roanoke attractive to manufacturers. American Viscose opened a large rayon plant in Southeast Roanoke in October 1917. This plant closed in 1958, leaving 5,000 workers unemployed which was soon followed by the 2,000 workers laid off when N&W converted to diesel.

Cultural hub
Today, Roanoke is known for its Chili Cook-Off, Local Colors Festival, Henry Street Festival, Strawberry Festival, and the large red, white, and blue illuminated (temporarily illuminated in white on April 22, 2007 in remembrance of the Virginia Tech Massacre of April 16, 2007) Mill Mountain Star on Mill Mountain, which is visible from many points in the city and surrounding valley.

Roanoke also plays host to Festival in the Park, an annual festival which is used to "To enhance and promote the visual and performing arts and sports activities in the Roanoke Valley and surrounding areas, to generate a positive economic impact on the Valley, and to fund an Arts Scholarship Program."

Arts, history and culture in Roanoke
Roanoke is the home to several artistic, cultural, and historical organizations.

Center in the Square was opened in downtown Roanoke on December 9, 1983 near the city market as part of the city's downtown revitalization effort. The Center, a converted warehouse, houses the History Museum of Western Virginia, which contains exhibits and artifacts related to the area's history and has a library of materials available to scholars and the public. The Center also houses the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Hopkins Planetarium.

Mill Mountain Theatre, a regional theatre, is located on the first floor of Center in the Square. As the name implies, the theatre was originally located on Mill Mountain from 1964 until 1976 when its original facility was destroyed by fire. The theatre has both a main stage for mainstream performances and a smaller black box theatre called Waldron Stage which hosts both newer and more experimental plays along with other live events. The best known events are an annual festival of new plays and the "No Shame Theatre" every Friday at 11 PM which is open to any performance that is "original, five minutes or less, and doesn’t break anything - people, the space, or laws." Mill Mountain Theatre has an atelier for visiting actors in a former downtown hotel.

The Center's other prominent tenant is the Art Museum of Western Virginia. The art museum features nineteenth and twentieth century American art, contemporary and modern art, decorative arts, and works on paper, and presents exhibitions of both regional and national significance. The art museum has begun construction of a new 75,000 square foot facility designed by Los Angeles based architect Randall Stout, who earlier in his career worked under Frank Gehry. The facility's design has sparked debate in the community between those who feel it will be a bold, refreshing addition to Roanoke and those who feel its unusual, irregular design featuring sharp angles contrasts too strongly with the existing buildings. Some are also concerned about the facility's cost at a time when many Roanoke area artistic organizations face financial challenges.

Roanoke's best known museum is the Virginia Museum of Transportation which houses many locomotives which were built in Roanoke, most prominently the Norfolk and Western J class #611 and A class #1218 steam engines, and other locomotives and rolling stock. As the name implies, however, the museum also covers the whole scope of transportation including aviation, automobiles, and buses.

Roanoke's landmark former passenger rail station has hosted the O. Winston Link Museum dedicated to the late steam-era railroad photography of O. Winston Link since 2004.

The Harrison Museum of African-American Culture is dedicated to the history and culture of Roanoke's African-American community and is currently located at a former school in the Gainsboro section of Roanoke. Gainsboro was originally a separate community and was founded before Big Lick. The Harrison Museum will move to Center in the Square when the Art Museum of Western Virginia occupies its new facility.

The most prominent recent addition to Roanoke's performing arts scene is the Shaftman Performance Hall, which opened in May 2001 and is located at the Jefferson Center, which formerly served Roanoke as Jefferson High School. Shaftman Hall hosts a regular season of concerts and other performances from the fall through the spring as well as other entertainment events and lectures.

In November 2006, the former Dumas Hotel was reopened as the Dumas Center for Artistic and Cultural Development. The hotel is located on a segment of First Street NW commonly known as Henry Street. Located literally across the railroad tracks from the center of downtown Roanoke, Henry Street served as the commercial and cultural center of Roanoke's African American community prior to desegregation. The Dumas Hotel hosted such guests as Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole when they performed in Roanoke. The renovated Dumas Center houses an auditorium with more than 180 seats, the Downtown Music Lab: a recording studio and music education center for teens, the Dumas Drama Guild, and the offices of Opera Roanoke.

The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra has performances at Shaftman Hall, the Salem Civic Center, and the Roanoke Civic Center. Current conductor David Wiley and his predecessor Victoria Bond have made the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra nationally respected.

Virginia Western Theatre has performances in Whitman Auditorium at Virginia Western Community College, and has been performing high quality original and well known theatrical productions since 1968. VWT is best known for their family friendly, “children’s production” that happens each winter. This production usually is attended by 3000+ people each year.

The Roanoke Civic Center's auditorium and newly renovated theatre, now known as the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre, host concerts, touring Broadway theatre performances, the Miss Virginia pageant, and other events.

The Grandin Theatre in the Grandin Village of Southwest Roanoke regularly screens art house films, family features, and mainstream movies. The Grandin Theatre was the home of Mill Mountain Theatre from 1976 until 1983. The Buchanan Theatre recently reopened in Buchanan and screens classic and mainstream films and holds concerts and other live events.

Roanoke has also been home to the Showtimers Community Theatre since 1951. Attic Productions is located in Fincastle and opened a new facility in November 2006. The Star City Playhouse plans to begin performances in 2007 at its theatre on Williamson Road.

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Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America

Roanoke
Roanoke, Virginia - United States of America