Roanoke and Smith Mountain Lake, VA

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Roanoke (/ˈroʊənoʊk/) is an independent city in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. At the 2010 census, the population was 97,032.^[7] It is located in the Roanoke Valley of the Roanoke Region of Virginia.^[8]

Roanoke is the largest municipality in Southwest Virginia, and is the principal municipality of the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had a 2010 population of 308,707. It is composed of the independent cities of Roanoke and Salem, and Botetourt, Craig, Franklin, and Roanoke counties. Bisected by the Roanoke River, Roanoke is the commercial and cultural hub of much of Southwest Virginia and portions of Southern West Virginia.^[9]

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Incorporation

The town first called Big Lick was established in 1852 and chartered in 1874. It was named for a large outcropping of salt which drew the wildlife to the site near the Roanoke River.^[32] In 1882 it became the town of Roanoke, and in 1884 it was chartered as the independent city of Roanoke. The name Roanoke is said to have originated from an Algonquian word for “shell money”.^[33] The name for the river was that used by the Algonquian speakers who lived 300 miles away where the river emptied into the sea near Roanoke Island. The native people who lived near where the city was founded did not speak Algonquian. They spoke Siouan languages, Tutelo and Catawban. There were also Cherokee speakers in that general area who fought with the Catawba people. The city grew frequently through annexation through the middle of the 20th century.^[34] The last annexation was in 1976. The state legislature has since prohibited cities from annexing land from adjacent counties. Roanoke’s location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the middle of the Roanoke Valley between Maryland and Tennessee, made it the transportation hub of western Virginia and contributed to its rapid growth. Best Real Estate Agents Roanoke

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During colonial times the site of Roanoke was an important hub of trails and roads. The Great Indian Warpath which later merged into the colonial Great Wagon Road, one of the most heavily traveled roads of 18th-century America, ran from Philadelphia through the Shenandoah Valley to the future site of the City of Roanoke, where the Roanoke River passed through the Blue Ridge. The Carolina Road branched off in Cloverdale, Virginia to Boones Mill, Virginia, and on to the Yadkin River Valley. The Roanoke Gap proved a useful route for immigrants to settle the Carolina Piedmont region. At Roanoke Gap, another branch of the Great Wagon Road, the Wilderness Road, continued southwest to Tennessee.

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In the 1850s, Big Lick became a stop on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T) which linked Lynchburg with Bristol on the Virginia-Tennessee border.

After the American Civil War (1861–1865), William Mahone, a civil engineer and hero of the Battle of the Crater, was the driving force in the linkage of three railroads, including the V&T, across the southern tier of Virginia to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol, Virginia in 1870. However, the Financial Panic of 1873 wrecked the AM&O’s finances. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone’s role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when northern financial interests took control. At the foreclosure auction, the AM&O was purchased by E.W. Clark & Co., a private banking firm in Philadelphia which controlled the Shenandoah Valley Railroad then under construction up the valley from Hagerstown, Maryland. The AM&O was renamed Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W).

Frederick J. Kimball, a civil engineer and partner in the Clark firm, headed the new line and the new Shenandoah Valley Railroad. For the junction for the Shenandoah Valley and the Norfolk and Western roads, Kimball and his board of directors selected the small Virginia village called Big Lick, on the Roanoke River. Although the grateful citizens offered to rename their town “Kimball”, at his suggestion, they agreed to name it Roanoke after the river. As the N&W brought people and jobs, the Town of Roanoke quickly became an independent city in 1884. In fact, Roanoke became a city so quickly that it earned the nickname “Magic City”.

Kimball’s interest in geology was instrumental in the development of the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and West Virginia. He pushed N&W lines through the wilds of West Virginia, north to Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio, and south to Durham, North Carolina, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This gave the railroad the route structure it was to use for more than 60 years.

The Virginian Railway (VGN), an engineering marvel of its day, was conceived and built by William Nelson Page and Henry Huttleston Rogers. Following the Roanoke River, the VGN was built through the City of Roanoke early in the 20th century. It merged with the N&W in 1959.

The opening of the coalfields made N&W prosperous and Pocahontas bituminous coal world-famous. Transported by the N&W and neighboring Virginian Railway (VGN), local coal-fueled half the world’s navies. Today it stokes steel mills and power plants all over the globe.

The Norfolk & Western was famous for manufacturing steam locomotives in-house. It was N&W’s Roanoke Shops that made the company known industry-wide for its excellence in steam power. The Roanoke Shops, with its workforce of thousands, is where the famed classes A, J, and Y6 locomotives were designed, built, and maintained. New steam locomotives were built there until 1953, long after diesel-electric had emerged as the motive power of choice for most North American railroads. About 1960, N&W was the last major railroad in the United States to convert from steam to diesel power.  Best Real Estate Agents Roanoke

The presence of the railroad also made Roanoke attractive to manufacturers. American Viscose opened a large rayon plant in Southeast Roanoke in October 1917.^[35] This plant closed in 1958, leaving 5,000 workers unemployed. When N&W converted to diesel, 2,000 railroad workers were laid off.^[36]

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Roanoke has a weak mayor-city manager form of government. The city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the city’s government and has the authority to hire and fire city employees. The mayor has little, if any, executive authority and essentially is the “first among equals” on the Roanoke City Council. The mayor, however, has a bully pulpit as Roanoke media frequently cover the mayor’s appearances and statements. The current mayor of Roanoke is Sherman Lea and the current city manager is Robert S. Cowell. The city council has six members, not counting the mayor, all of whom are elected on an at-large basis. A proposal for a ward-based council, in which the mayor and vice mayor would continue to be elected at-large, was rejected by Roanoke voters in 1997, but ward system advocates still contend that the at-large system results in a disproportionate number of council members coming from affluent neighborhoods and that electing some or all council members on a ward basis would result in a more equal representation of all areas of the city. The four-year terms of city council members are staggered, so there are biennial elections. The candidate who receives the most votes is designated the vice mayor for the following two years.

The city’s African-American and professional class voting blocs have made the Democratic Party the city’s leading party in recent years.

Independent candidate David A. Bowers, a former Democrat, defeated incumbent Democrat Nelson Harris for Mayor in the May 2008 election with 53% of the vote. Best Real Estate Agents Roanoke can be found on this website. In both the 2000 election, Republican Ralph K. Smith and in the 2004 election Nelson Harris won with less than 40% of the vote in competitive three-way races.

In the May 2008 council elections, Democrats Court Rosen, Anita Price, and Sherman Lea defeated a slate of loosely allied independent city council candidates including incumbent Brian Wishneff. In the May 2006 council elections, a slate of three former Democrats running on an independent slate backed by Harris defeated the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. This election ended the city’s long-running debate about the fate of Victory Stadium.

On June 27, 2016, Sherman P. Lea, Sr. took the office of mayor.  Best Real Estate Agents Roanoke

Roanoke is represented by two members of the Virginia House of Delegates, Sam Rasoul (D-11th) and Chris Head (R-17th), and one member of the Virginia Senate, John Edwards (D-21st). Former Roanoke mayor Ralph Smith won the 2007 election in the neighboring 22nd Senate district after defeating incumbent Brandon Bell for the Republican nomination in the primary election and Democrat Michael Breiner in the general election.  Best Real Estate Agents Roanoke

The City of Roanoke lies within the 6th Congressional District of Virginia, which also includes Lynchburg and much of the Shenandoah Valley. The 9th Congressional District of Virginia, represented by Morgan Griffith of neighboring Salem, has traditionally covered southwest Virginia but has expanded into parts of Salem, Roanoke County and counties to the north of Roanoke to make up for population losses in the rest of the district. Denver Riggleman represents much of the area to south and east of Roanoke, including nearby Franklin County, in the 5th Congressional District of Virginia, which also stretches north to Charlottesville.

(Sourced by wikipedia.com)