Page 45 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

to wake up to Roanoke today,” The Industrial South exclaimed in September 1882, “he
would have been as much bewildered as Rip Van Winkle was when he awoke in the
Kaatskills.” Twelve hundred “engineers of all grades, and of all industries” had already
arrived, the journal explained, and had turned Big Lick into a “bustling cosmopolitan town.”

A Richmond State correspondent who visited was impressed enough to predict that
Roanoke would soon become “the Atlanta of Virginia.” A reporter for the Richmond Dispatch
was bewildered: “On every hand – on hillside and in dell, where last year the lowing herds
found ample pasturage – now stand comfortable houses, broad streets, plank walks, and
square after square of compact buildings, affording pleasant homes for upwards of three
thousand persons who have collected here within less than a year.”

A correspondent for the East Tennesseean filed a similar story. “Gangs of negroes,” he wrote,
“are at work in different portions of the town cutting out new streets and avenues.” Land
values had appreciated several hundred percent and the “hum of machinery is heard on
every side.” What was a year ago “‘a howling wilderness,’” was now “a busy thriving city.”

Finally, the road to recovery both in word and deed appears as a possibility. The town comes
together as a unified Roanoke, and the promise of the New South embodied in Roanoke
marches towards its fulfillment. Could Roanoke finally reach it potential as a peaceful,
progressive and citizen-friendly town. And could the new-found ‘parent’ industry become a
good corporate citizen and become less autocratic and more democratic.