Page 48 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

A writer from the Pennsylvania-based American Volunteer also found the place “a
true type western town, grown up almost in a night, you might say.” Salem Avenue,
with its dozens of “irregularly built” businesses, was the town’s main street, the
correspondent reported, adding that the entire road had “a good-sized stream of
water” running across it. What was more appalling, the place had taxes enough to
support only one school while “the saloons, which exist at every step, are well
patronized.”

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. However, there was one very
important difference in the boom-towns of the far west and Roanoke. 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
using false-fronts to camouflage their meager size or crude construction.

In the west, 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.”

Additionally, there continued to be (often overlooked) a significant difference between
Roanoke and these other municipalities. 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,