Page 73 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

civic leaders to a committee charged with securing municipal support.

News of the potential anniversary celebration created a stir among the city’s businessmen,
nearly all of whom assumed the event would be an advertising bonanza for Roanoke. Indeed,
local capitalists interviewed by The Times predicted that the celebration would more than pay
for itself, widen the town’s “already national reputation,” and “bring to us a most desirable class
of people, who seeing our progress, would aid in spreading abroad the history of Roanoke’s
advancement.”

The Decennial Celebration was held during the month of June, 1892, commemorating the tenth
anniversary of the changing of the name of Big Lick to that of Roanoke and the location of the
Roanoke Machine Works in this city. This was a gala day for Roanoke, and was an occasion of
much enthusiasm and interest. There was a street parade with floats (see rare picture below)
representing various classes of trade, secret orders in full regalia, and employees of the
Roanoke Machine Works in uniform, representing the several departments of this great
enterprise.

The parade was reviewed from the Norfolk & Western office building by Frederick J. Kimball,
President of the road. There were also entertainments of various kinds, speech-making, and a
general celebration commensurate with the progress already achieved and the brilliant
prospects for the city's future.

Although the city offered its support, the Commercial Association assumed sole responsibility
for planning the celebration. The group picked the eighteenth of June, the anniversary of the
completion of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad’s tracks into town, as the date for the decennial.
By early June, most of the planning for the affair was complete, but in an address to several
thousand residents, land agent James S. Simmons, chairman of the celebration, explained that
the group had only been able to raise $1,000 of the $9,000 it needed to cover expenses. “Our
reputation is at stake,” Henry Trout told the crowd, and donations were crucial. “Every man,
woman and child in Roanoke,” The Times observed, “ought to feel that he or she has a personal
interest in this affair and give something.

”The association’s ads for the event belied its financial difficulties and promised that “the most
stupendous celebration of the kind that has ever been held in the state” would take place in the
“Magic City of the South.” Local merchants hoping to capitalize on the hype offered “decennial
souvenir spoons” and even offered “decennial whiskey” that had been distilled in 1882.

In the weeks that followed, residents and business leaders donated more than enough of the
funds needed, and on the morning of the eighteenth, the celebration got under way with
thousands of spectators lining the streets downtown to watch a two-mile-long parade of floats
“portraying the growth and progress of Roanoke.” Local businesses sponsored most of the
displays. The Cold Storage Company’s float, for example, featured blocks of ice cooling down a
butchered hog, while the Hammond Printing Works showed off a working printing press,
Fishburne Brothers Tobacco had black workers packing bags with its “Yellow Leaf” brand, and
the Pocahontas Coal Company displayed the largest lump of bituminous coal ever mined
(wonder what ever happened to that lump of coal? - see picture below).