In 1882, when the Shenandoah Valley Railroad reached down from Hagerstown to link up with the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio at Big Lick, Virginia, the village it touched was home to fewer than five hundred people. The name came from salt marshes that had drawn deer and bison for centuries. Within two years, the railroad merger that followed had renamed the railroad the Norfolk & Western, the town had renamed itself Roanoke, and a city was being built around the locomotive shops. They called it the Magic City for a reason. Today the Roanoke Region stretches across four counties and two independent cities, more than 316,000 people in its core, nearly 475,000 if you draw the line wide enough to take in the New River Valley.
The story of the region as an American crossroads begins long before the railroads arrived. In the mid-1700s, Scotch-Irish and German settlers pushed down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley, while other migrants followed the James River from eastern Virginia. The two streams met here, in the broad geographic depression between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies that locals call the Roanoke Valley. Botetourt County was carved out of Augusta in 1770 and named for the popular colonial governor; at its founding its boundaries stretched west all the way to the Mississippi, technically containing most of what would become Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The town of Fincastle in Botetourt served as the gateway to the American West and was the starting point for Lewis and Clark's exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. The Fincastle Courthouse, modeled on designs Thomas Jefferson sent from Monticello, still stands — rebuilt in 1975 after a fire destroyed the 1847 structure.
Franklin County, carved from Bedford and Henry counties in 1785 and named for Benjamin Franklin, produced one of the most consequential lives in nineteenth-century America. Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856, on the Burroughs Plantation about sixteen miles northeast of Rocky Mount. He lived his childhood as a child in slavery, in a one-room cabin, and after emancipation he taught himself to read and ultimately to lead. In 1881 he founded what would become the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His birthplace in Franklin County is preserved today as the Booker T. Washington National Monument — a small, plainspoken site that asks visitors to reckon with where extraordinary lives can begin.
The Virginia and Tennessee Railroad reached Big Lick in the 1850s, linking Lynchburg to Bristol and changing everything. After the Civil War, three smaller lines were stitched together into the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio, and the 1882 connection with the Shenandoah Valley Railroad transformed the merged company into the Norfolk & Western. Roanoke became a rail town in the deepest sense. Pocahontas bituminous coal from southwest Virginia rolled through here on its way to fuel half the world's navies. The Roanoke Shops built famous steam locomotives. The Virginian Railway came up the Roanoke River in the early 20th century and merged with N&W in 1959. Up in Alleghany County, the Chesapeake and Ohio established its depot in Clifton Forge — the only town in the United States with that name — and the town boomed into a rail hub that remains the region's only Amtrak stop.
In the 1960s, the hydroelectric Smith Mountain Dam impounded the Roanoke River to create Smith Mountain Lake, now the largest lake entirely within Virginia at 20,600 acres with more than 500 miles of shoreline. It became an economic engine for Franklin and Bedford Counties — luxury homes, condominiums, televised Bassmasters tournaments. The Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke, a sculptural work of modern architecture, has hosted Cirque du Soleil. The Mill Mountain Theatre puts on a season of plays. The region falls along the Crooked Road, Virginia's heritage music trail. Eleven colleges and universities — from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to Roanoke College in Salem to Hollins University north of the city — anchor a knowledge economy that grew up alongside the railroads, Carilion Clinic, and the manufacturing plants that still build everything from Volvo trucks to Yokohama tires.
The Roanoke Region centers near 37.25°N, 79.92°W, in the long Roanoke Valley between the Blue Ridge to the east and the Alleghenies to the west. The Mill Mountain Star above downtown Roanoke is one of the more recognizable landmarks in the region from the air. Primary airport: Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional (KROA). At cruise altitudes of 5,000-8,000 ft AGL the long valley stretches from Lynchburg in the east-northeast through Roanoke and Salem toward Blacksburg in the southwest.