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This project is a table of contents for all projects relating to this City of Virginia. Please feel free to add profiles of anyone who was born, lived or died in this city.
The current site of Roanoke lies near the intersection of the Great Wagon Road and the Carolina Road, two branches of a network of early colonial roads that developed from Native American trails in the Appalachian region. While the name Roanoke is said to have originated from an Algonquian word for "shell money", that name was first used 300 miles away where the Roanoke River empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Roanoke Island. The Roanoke Valley itself was originally home to members of the Tutelo tribe, a Siouan-speaking people who were gradually pushed out of the area by advancing European settlers.
Many of those settlers were Scotch-Irish who arrived in the region during the 18th and early 19th centuries following the Plantation of Ulster. These pioneers often moved with the frontier, however, pushing farther west into Kentucky and beyond rather than taking root in one location. In their place came significant numbers of Germans from Pennsylvania via the Great Wagon Road who stayed and farmed the land. By 1838 the area was populated enough that Roanoke County was created out of parts of Botetourt and Montgomery Counties, and the area's first railroad, the Virginia and Tennessee, arrived in 1852.
The railroad built their new depot just south of a small town named Gainesborough, but named the depot after Big Lick, another small community located just to the east, which itself was named after the salt deposits that had drawn game to the area for years. Gainesborough became increasingly referred to as Big Lick and even later as Old Lick once development drifted further south towards the depot. Growth in the area was stalled by the Civil War; Roanoke County voted 850-0 in favor of secession and lost many of its men in the subsequent fighting. The burgeoning tobacco trade helped the region's recovery during Reconstruction, however, and within a decade of the war's end there were no fewer than six tobacco factories in the immediate vicinity of the Big Lick Depot.
In 1874 the community surrounding the depot applied for and received a town charter and the Town of Big Lick was formally established. A pivotal moment in the area's history occurred eight years later when efforts by town boosters succeeded in securing Big Lick as the junction of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W). The two companies also relocated their respective headquarters to the town (the two lines would officially merge in 1890). Big Lick's relatively small size compared to the nearby county seat Salem worked in its favor as a draw for the railroad, as the town's ample farmland and nearby water sources were well suited to the railroads' goal of building what was essentially an entire town, including railroad shops, offices, a hotel, and suitable housing for their many employees.
Big Lick's residents voted to rename the town "Kimball" after Frederick J. Kimball, an executive for the two railroad companies who played a significant role in their new location. Kimball turned down the honor, saying, "On the Roanoke River in Roanoke County – name it Roanoke." The town obliged, officially becoming the Town of Roanoke on February 3, 1882. The new charter also annexed nearly two and a half square miles of additional land, including the Town of Gainesborough (later shortened to Gainsboro) which by that point had already become the center of the area's African American community. Kimball chose a wheat field north of the railroad tracks and east of Gainsboro for the N&W's new hotel, and the 69-room Hotel Roanoke – designed originally in the Queen Anne style before numerous rebuilds and expansions gave it its current Tudor Revival appearance – opened its doors in 1882.
With the rapid influx of railroad employees and others in associated industries, Roanoke's population soared, and by the end of 1883 had passed 5,000. That milestone made the town eligible for a city charter, and on January 31, 1884 the town became the City of Roanoke.
With a population that ballooned from 400 residents in 1880 to 16,000 in 1890 – and earning itself the nickname "The Magic City" in the process – Roanoke suffered many of the same difficulties that affected other 19th century boomtowns. Its infrastructure was largely nonexistent, and a lack of sewers combined with the area's marshy terrain contributed to regular outbreaks of diphtheria and cholera. Bond initiatives designed to alleviate these and other issues highlighted racial tensions in the city, as the African American community – roughly 30 percent of Roanoke's population in 1891 – opposed the measures on the grounds that the money would only be used to improve white neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods in Roanoke typically received public amenities such as running water and paved roads only after their white counterparts, and Roanoke was among the first to adopt the Jim Crow laws that were becoming increasingly popular in the South. The local press, for its part, stoked the white population's fears and anxiety with near-constant reports of African American "savagery”.
In September 1893 tensions boiled over when a white woman was allegedly robbed and beaten by an African American man near the city's market. The supposed assailant was being held in the city jail when a mob of hundreds surrounded the building and demanded "lynch justice”. A shootout between the mob and an undermanned militia left eight dead and thirty-one more injured, including the city's mayor, the previously widely-admired Henry S. Trout, who had vowed protection of the prisoner. A renewed and riotous mob was eventually successful in gaining control of the accused assailant and proceeded to hang him and mutilate his body, which was eventually burned when the mob was deterred from its initial plan to bury it in Mayor Trout's front yard. The mayor himself was forced to flee the city out of fear for his life, and only returned a week later after the national press condemned the riot and praised Trout's courage.
Despite these and other setbacks, the city continued to grow through the early 20th century. This growth was manifested both in population surges as well as in multiple annexations of land from the surrounding county. In addition to land gained with its 1882 town charter, relatively unopposed annexations occurred five more times by 1926, though Roanoke County would become less agreeable to later attempts. Mill Mountain became a popular entertainment locale for early residents, with an observation tower and the Rockledge Inn each opening atop the mountain in 1892. Mountain Park, an early amusement center complete with a casino and roller coaster, opened at the foot of the mountain in 1903, and beginning in 1910 visitors could pay a quarter to ride an incline railway to the top of Mill Mountain and back.
Another mainstay at the base of the mountain has been Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Completed in 1900 as Roanoke Hospital, the building has undergone many expansions and today is the flagship of the Carilion Clinic healthcare group. The hospital joined a number of manufacturing operations that were established along the banks of the Roanoke River in the early 20th century, including the American Viscose Corporation. That company built a plant in 1917 that by a decade later would employ 5,000 and be the largest rayon producing mill in the world.
The city leased land for an airfield beginning in 1929, but its development into the region's primary airport wouldn't begin until its designation as a defense project provided federal funding in 1940. That same year N&W donated the fairground Maher Field to the city for the purpose of building a stadium and armory.[40]: 103 Victory Stadium – optimistically named upon its completion in 1942 – would play host to the annual Thanksgiving Day football game between Virginia Tech and Virginia Military Institute for years afterwards.
By the mid-20th century Roanoke was increasingly losing population and businesses to a Roanoke County that had become less rural and more suburban in nature and consequently more resistant to annexation attempts by the city. The city was nevertheless successful in annexing additional land in 1943, 1949, three small acquisitions in 1965, 1967, and 1968, and once more in 1976. The county won immunity from further annexations in 1980, but by then the city had grown from its original size of 0.5 square miles to 43.0 square miles.
In 1949 the local merchants association erected an 88.5-foot-tall illuminated star at the top of Mill Mountain in celebration of the upcoming Christmas shopping season. The star was an immediate hit among the city's population, leading to its illumination year-round and earning the city its nickname of "Star City of the South". Despite the popularity boost for the merchants association, shopping habits in Roanoke were becoming more fractured as suburban shopping centers drew patrons away from an increasingly vacant downtown. Crossroads Mall, the first enclosed shopping center in Virginia, and Towers Mall, at the time one of the largest shopping centers in the state, were each completed in 1961. In later years, Tanglewood Mall (1973) and Valley View Mall (1985) contributed to Roanoke's status as the region's retail hub.
Another drastic mid-century change to the city arrived with a massive "urban renewal" effort that saw the construction of both the Roanoke Civic Center (now Berglund Center) as well as an interstate spur into Downtown Roanoke. Much of the land for these projects was in Northeast Roanoke, a community of primarily black citizens who had been largely redlined from the rest of the city. City officials gained the land through eminent domain and proceeded to clear over 1,000 buildings, often through widescale burning. Later projects in the largely black Gainsboro neighborhood removed hundreds of homes and businesses there as well, and late-20th and early-21st century revitalization efforts have been met with distrust and varied success.
The second half of the 20th century ushered in a change of identity for Roanoke. In 1982 the N&W completed a merger with the Southern Railway to form the Norfolk Southern Railway, which then relocated their headquarters from Roanoke to Norfolk, Virginia (and have since moved again to Atlanta, Georgia). The company closed their regional headquarters in Roanoke in 2015, and in 2020 shuttered the locomotive shops. The departure of the railroad combined with a string of manufacturing plant closures left a hole in the city's economic base.
In 1987, however, the merger of two of the area's largest hospitals created what would eventually become Carilion Clinic, a medical group that has since become the largest employer in the state west of Richmond. The group's partnerships with Virginia Tech and Radford University have created a college and research facility in what was formerly an industrial brownfield area and has now been termed the city's "innovation corridor". These developments along with the city's decision to improve its parks and recreation amenities and market itself as an outdoor tourism hotspot have helped reverse its decades-long loss of young adults, and in 2020 Roanoke's population passed 100,000 for the first time since 1980.
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