Page 59 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

approved in 1884, sanitation, drainage and road problems went largely not completed
until the end of the decade. However, the board of health’s campaign against
unsanitary practices was finally having an effect by then. Its head physician reported
that it was because an increasing number of citizens now were devoting “more
attention to the cleanliness of their own premises than formerly.” As a result, he
boasted, the city was “never cleaner than now.”

The campaign against unsanitary homes and yards, however, did not stop. The day
after this announcement the board had twelve black residents arrested for “neglecting
to keep their premises clean.”

Elsewhere in town, other sanitation problems emerged. At the new Market House, for
instance, farmers had begun camping-out in their Conestoga wagons, and as a result,
the Roanoke Daily Times reported, “wherever these wagons have stood, there is left
piles of garbage, and there it lies nearly everyday, festering in the sun and breeding
disease.” A previous picture I posted showed the early market area with the huge
Conestoga wagons parked out front.

The limited number of stalls in and around the market building forced hucksters to
park their horses and carts along nearby streets. The lack of systematic sanitation or
restroom facilities meant that animal manure and wagon “slops” mixed with spoiled
meat and rotten produce were in abundance in and around Market Square.
Authorities were well aware of the “fever-breeding odors” caused by the farmers, the
paper reported, but had done nothing to regulate the place.

An anonymous “Sufferer” also blamed elected officials for the situation, relaying in a
letter to the editor that the lane in front of the market house was “as bad if not worse
than any swamp, and the stench can now be compared to a glue or guano (the
droppings primarily of bats - now used as a very effective fertilizer) factory.”

Chronic street and drainage problems continued to plague city fathers as well.
Freeholders approved bonds for modest sewer improvements in 1888 and for three
bridges over railroad tracks in early 1890, but allotted no funds for street work.
Moreover, in 1890 the town annexed land surrounding the city that nearly doubled its
size, added even more roads to maintain, and pushed the town’s population over
sixteen thousand.

Funds for upgrading streets and building sewers did not exist, but residents and the
press nevertheless insisted that authorities do something. Railroad Avenue, the first
street visible from the depot, had yet to be macadamized, and after even a light rain,
it turned to mud. The situation, one entrepreneur reasoned, was bad for business
since any capitalist passing through the city was “not likely to be favorably
impressed.”

In the spring of 1890, a hundred and fifty residents, concerned about miasmas from a
“marshy bottom” along Commerce Street, signed a petition demanding that officials
do something. The Roanoke Daily Times endorsed their request and pointed out the
danger posed by a “chain of mud-puddles” on Salem Avenue: “Every time it rains