Page 24 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

Maple, Sugar Maple, a few Weeping Willows near water, European Larch and Purple
Beech.” On the “bare hills” where the railroad’s hotel was to go up, the designer put in
“artistic landscape gardening” to provide the necessary “shading and ornamenting.”

In early 1882, the RL&IC moved to bolster its holdings in the eastern part of Roanoke.
Assuming correctly that land near the proposed railroad shops would “be valuable in the
future as locations for furnaces and manufacturing establishments,” it hired former
right-of-way agent John C. Moomaw to broker a deal on forty-three acres nearby. The owner,
Moomaw found out, was willing to sell about 80 percent of the tract for $150 per acre. The
remaining 20 percent scattered throughout the property made the deal unattractive, and
although Moomaw pleaded with the owner, he finally had to inform his Philadelphia bosses
that “at present I cannot get his consent to let it go.”

The report baffled Frederick Kimball, and in the days that followed, he ordered his chief
engineer to make a deal on another tract nearby. The reply from Roanoke, however, brought
more bad news: all other suitable land belonged to a widow, and although it “could be
secured in time,” she had turned down all offers, making a court order condemning her land
necessary for the company to get it. Although the firm contemplated this heavy-handed
tactic, Moomaw eventually pushed through a deal on the original plot, and the company
backed off.

Elsewhere in town, the RL&IC secured space for railroad offices next to its proposed hotel
and depot by purchasing tobacco factories owned by Peyton Terry and other local
merchants. The firm tore down all the warehouses but did little economic damage because
they had been in decline ever since a rival railroad completed a branch line into Franklin
County’s tobacco fields. Though there were abundant springs in Big Lick, residents relied on
wells and cisterns for their water supply.

Engineers for the RL&IC pushed immediately for a more modern system, and following their
advice, the company purchased Elijah McClanahan’s spring and mill at the base of “Mill
Mountain” along with his surrounding one-hundred and forty-three acres for $35,000.

Believing Peyton Terry’s six-hundred and fifty acre farm southeast of the old depot would be
good for “suburban residences,” the company then spent $125,000 on that property, getting
Terry’s “Elmwood” estate and Mill Mountain – the peak above McClanahan Mill – as part of
the deal. Terry had paid only $800 for the entire tract five years earlier, and like the handful
of other locals who sold what was once inexpensive farmland to the Improvement Company,
he was suddenly rich beyond his wildest expectations.

When the buying spree ended in December 1881, RL&IC President J. B. Austin reported
that the firm had purchased 1,152 acres in and around Roanoke. Reselling the land once it
increased in value, he promised stockholders, would soon bring “a handsome return for the
capital invested in the enterprise.”

Natives sensed the same possibilities emerging in real estate sales. Indeed, after the
SVRR completed its tracks into town in June 1882, land speculation in the older part of town