Page 20 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

The constant stream of ridicule and portrayal of Roanoke as a company town
or western boom town tempered the wildly exaggerated reports of a New South
emerging there and created anxiety among locals. When the town’s subsequent
growth did not measure up to boosters’ predictions, many residents interpreted it as a
sign that the boom had gone bust. As a result, widespread gossip surfaced about the
looming collapse of land values, the railroad relocating, or the Improvement
Company and Machine Works going bankrupt. “The air is rife with rumors of
impending destruction,” S. S. Brooke explained, “and every occurrence, connected
even with the progress of events here, is distorted, magnified and greedily sent out.”
The town was doing well, he argued, so “the cranks had as well cease their croaking.”

Reporters’ repeated focus on the similarities between Roanoke and “mushroom
cities” of the West were far from an exaggeration. Most “instant cities” in Colorado or
California lacked the small base of natives that were present in Roanoke but
experienced the same period of intensive demographic growth coupled with
haphazard structural development. Moreover, they also had the same abundance of
cheaply built, frame vernacular structures, similar wooden sidewalks aligning mud or
dirt streets, lack of systematic sanitation, and numerous businesses houses using
false-fronts to camouflage their meager size or crude construction. Since a gold or
silver vein could dry up at any moment, their residents, like Roanoke’s inhabitants,
were less likely to gamble on expensive brick buildings. They were also not overly
concerned about municipal services because their long-term residency was
questionable. In this “camp phase” of development, land companies, saloons,
gambling houses and brothels usually outnumbered dry-goods stores, churches,
restaurants, or schools, and most inhabitants adopted a get rich quick mentality along
with a somewhat disorderly “frontier atmosphere.”

Although Roanoke was also often mistaken for a company town, the city was clearly
not entirely developed, owned, or managed by the Clark firm. Natives owned the area
around what had been Big Lick Depot as well as much of the western city, and the
municipality had an independent government structure as well as numerous
industries and businesses not connected to Clark & Company.

The resemblance to a company town, nevertheless, was striking. The RL&IC
controlled almost all of eastern Roanoke, where most workers lived in
company-owned cottages, and its paternalism was responsible for Woodland Park,
the local Catholic Church, a “public” schoolhouse, and numerous beautification
crusades in the Northeast.

It owned the city’s water supply, developed nearly all of the property that was
emerging as the central downtown district, and dominated holdings in local property
and housing. The Roanoke Machine Works, the SVRR, and the N&W were by far the
municipality’s largest employers, and the Clark firm was also a silent partner in
several other local enterprises. Moreover, Clark & Company architecture – the Hotel
Roanoke, the SVRR Offices, the Union Depot, the massive shops, yards, and
roundhouses entirely dominated the local landscape. None of this, however, made
Roanoke a company town. Instead, the city most closely resembled what one scholar
has categorized as a “corporate town”; places where multiple enterprises and an