Page 17 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

that began the enmity between Lynchburg and Roanoke that exists to this day.

Soon after Kimball approved Big Lick as the junction, he and other Clark & Company
executives came to investigate the site. The “Big Lick Brass Band” serenaded the delegation
when it arrived, and at a meeting in Rorer Hall later, the railroad officials gave a series of
rousing speeches, delighting the hundreds of residents who turned out to learn about their
apparent good fortune. Colonel Upton L. Boyce, vice president of the SVRR, predicted that
in three years Big Lick would surpass 5,000 in population. The goal was easily achieved.

While residents waited for the SVRR construction teams to finish tracks into Roanoke,
Enoch W. Clark & Company organized the additional corporations it would need to transform
the place into the base of operations for the Shenandoah Valley and Norfolk & Western
Railroads. In July 1881, the firm created “The Roanoke Land & Improvement Company”
(RL&IC) as its real estate and development subsidiary, and a couple months later, it
organized the Roanoke Machine Works (RMW) to manufacture and repair railroad cars and
locomotives.

The company appointed Peyton Terry, the merchant most responsible for brokering the
junction deal, to the boards of directors of both new corporations, and it offered Henry Trout,
the town’s popular state delegate, the presidency of a newly organized local bank. The
RL&IC also paid Trout another $50,000 for the remainder of his farm, making him
immediately one of Roanoke’s wealthiest residents.

The infrastructure problems, the diseases and the increasing distrust between Clark and
company and their hidden agenda as well as the dissension between the locals and new
arrivals began to tear at the fabric of the town and threaten to turn the boom town into a
ghost town.

As the post has gone on an appropriate length, the discussion as mention above will be the
topic of the next installments.

Comments are always welcome.