When you move to a new town, even for a month, you learn so many things about the place. Roanoke is a beautiful small city with an accessible downtown. It's anchored by the beautiful Taubman Museum which I talked about in my last blog. Curiously, though, I asked several people what they thought was the best attraction in Roanoke. They ALL gave the same answer: The Mill Mountain Star. The "SW Virginia Living" magazine had a picture of the star all lit up in front of a full supermoon which I thought represented how the Roanokians feel about the star and by extension, their little city.
"Roanoke Star" - Symbol of Roanoke, the Star City
Roanoke sits in Roanoke Valley and is surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, a range in the Appalachians. We drove up Mill Mountain to check out the star and to take a short hike. (Turned out to be VERY short - no, not my feet or my back. It was hot, hot, hot and all about trees and only trees - thus, boring after the 10,000th tree.) Here's what the star looks like during the day:
The star was built in 1949, a symbol of the post WWII optimism. There was an amazing amount of materials needed to built this. Here are the statistics:
Naturally, there's a lookout observatory platform, at the base of the star, and the Wells Fargo Building dominates the downtown skyline of Roanoke as the Empire State Building did in Manhattan when it was first built. You can see the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background.
Here we are on the Mountain Star Trail doing our abbreviated hike. You can tell we haven't been on the 'trail' long because I'm not beet red! I'm admiring the forest of elm trees which Drake guesses are 40 to 50 feet tall. And, as you can see, mostly these are saplings!
Roanoke is a railroad town. The railroad transformed this town in the 19th century just as towns in the 20th and 21st century are being transformed by the infrastructure locations of technology giants. The railroad was one of the major game changers of the industrial revolution as the computer has been in the electronic revolution.
The railroad stopping in your town immediately turned the town into the business hub of the region. The Norfolk and Western Railroad came to Roanoke in 1882. The town offered free land for the depot, tax exemptions and $10,000 in cash (can anyone say BRIBE?). It worked. Between 1880 and 1890, Roanoke, formerly Big Lick, became the fastest growing town in the South.
The railroad built the tracks and the depot down the center of town (about 700 residents at the time.) One consequence of the location of the 'tracks' was south of the tracks became the African-American side of town, and north of the tracks was entirely Caucasian. Jim Crow laws were vigorously enforced. Below is a 'then' and 'now' picture.
These pictures are from the Roanoke Historical Society Museum called the "O. Winston Link Museum". So, who is O.Winston Link? He's a self taught photographer, lifelong Roanoke resident, who decided to document the end of the 'steam era' of the Norfolk Western Railroad in the 1950's. He usually worked at night, carefully composed his photographs, used his engineering degree to plan his photos, set up photo flash bulbs to light what he wanted lit, and worked with two cameras. People who worked on the railroad loved him, and train engineers would often slow or stop their engines, so he could get his 'shot'. He had hundreds of negatives and photos since he processed all his photos himself. There didn't seem to be a market for his photos until they came to the attention of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The photographic curator knew genius when he saw it, and he promptly bought many of Link's photos. Today, you can see his best photographs in the museum. The museum has produced a wonderful 30 minute video about Link and his photographs.
As always, if you want to see more pictures (including a lineup of prostitutes circa 1885), just click on the link:
