Travel idea: Explore Roanoke's railroad history, historic downtown

ROANOKE, Va. – Although most 21st-century visitors arrive here by car, this town in Virginia’s magnificent Blue Ridge Mountains (visitroanokeva.com), about a six-hour drive from Columbus, retains many intriguing reminders of its railroad heritage.

Before the trains came through, what is now a thriving city was a backwater settlement called Big Lick, a moniker that was found lacking by founding founders about to be made prosperous by railroad money. (A more appropriate name was adopted from the nearby Roanoke River.)

Shortly after the Civil War, Norfolk & Western Railroad made Roanoke its headquarters and built the luxurious Hotel Roanoke (hotelroanoke.com), which became a sought-out oasis for train passengers and the hub of the city’s social scene, including the annual Miss Virginia beauty pageant.

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Although the hotel went through some bad times, even closing for several years in the early 1990s, today it has been renovated into a gem that retains much of its century-old Tudor-style charm, while serving as the city’s modern convention center.

Hotel Roanoke is also a great place to stay while exploring the city’s historic downtown, just a few steps away via pedestrian bridge across the city’s still-busy central railroad tracks.

Along those tracks, in the former Norfolk & Western Passenger Station, is the Roanoke Welcome Center, Roanoke History Museum and O. Winston Link Museum, which preserves Link's amazing railroad photography from the second half of the 20th century (roanokehistory.org).

Link documented the end of the steam locomotive era with a series of famous photographs, many carefully staged and timed to coincide with the passage of powerful and picturesque locomotives running on the Norfolk & Western lines, some for the last few times.

His nighttime photos were lit with dozens of the single-use flashbulbs of the day, precisely placed and wired together with as much as a mile of cable for a one-shot opportunity at the shot he was looking for. And visitors shouldn’t miss the documentary about Link’s life, nearly as fascinating as his photos.

Just down the tracks, in the former Norfolk & Western Freight Station, is the Virginia Museum of Transportation (vmt.org), featuring more than 50 pieces of railroad rolling stock on tracks beneath a huge, covered outdoor pavilion next to tracks that still host a busy freight traffic and daily Amtrak passenger service. Among the historic locomotives on display are some of Link’s favorite photographic subjects.

Downtown Roanoke is also home to several other fascinating museums, several housed in the Center in the Square (centerinthesquare.org). The Center is home to the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, the Science Museum of Western Virginia, and the hands-on Roanoke Starcade Video Game Museum and Roanoke Pinball Museum, which I found very difficult to leave.

The best thing about the Pinball Museum (roanokepinball.org) is that you can actually play with all the exhibits (imagine doing that at the Louvre). One $15 dollar ticket provides a day of free play on any of dozens of machines dating from blessedly simple 1930s games with top scores in the three digits, to 21st-century movie-franchise-themed mechanical marvels with targets that score in the millions. (Like the dollar, pinball points have suffered a marked inflation over the past century or so.)

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Also nearby is the Taubman Museum of Art, an attractive modernist structure designed by architect Randall Stout with an undulating roof line reminiscent of the rolling tops of the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains.

Strolling through pretty, walkable downtown Roanoke (downtownroanoke.org), visitors will find many lovely old commercial buildings now occupied by a variety of good restaurants, watering holes and interesting boutiques and shops, including the Mast General Store (mastgeneralstore.com), a venerable Blue Ridge merchant that opened a Roanoke outlet in 2020 in a beautiful historic building.

Thirsty visitors will also find several good craft breweries including Three Notch’d (threenotchdbrewing.com); Olde Salem, which also has a brewery in nearby Salem (oldesalembrewing); and Big Lick (biglickbrewingco.com).

At the center of downtown is Roanoke’s old City Market Building (citymarketbuilding.com), a picturesque, century-old brick edifice that was completely renovated in 2011 and is now home to several food-court style restaurants.

Another destination retail stop, drawing visitors from across the country, is Black Dog Salvage (blackdogsalvage.com) near Roanoke’s historic Grandin Village (historicgrandinvillage.com) neighborhood. Black Dog is a huge architectural salvage and design outlet, made famous during 11 seasons of the DIY Network reality series Salvage Dawgs, starring the store’s founders and staff. Even if you’re not in the market for antique stained glass or a vintage purple toilet, it’s fun to see the wide variety of unusual merchandise including, of course, a small display of railroad memorabilia.

For more information about things to see and do in Roanoke and Virginia’s Blue Ridge region, visit visitroanokeva.com.

Steve Stephens is a freelance travel writer and photographer. Email him at sjstephensjr@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Travel: Roanoke, Virginia, offers a look at railroad era