For Life Outside magazine, I profiled six Virginia mountain towns, with details on outdoor to-do’s, competitions, nightlife and cool overnights from rustic to ‘luxe.
Each city includes listings for a big outdoor lure, another outdoor lure, a competitive event this summer, recommendations for restaurants and overnight accomodations, and a bonus item.
Spring, 1861: Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, new President Abraham Lincoln mobilized the Union army and Virginia joined the wave of southern states voting to secede from the United States.
Delegates to the secession convention from northwest Virginia, who had opposed the split from the U.S., quickly left Richmond and returned home. As the war hit Virginia over the next few months, Union troops experienced early success in what is today West Virginia. The gains established the reputation of Union Gen. George McClellan, who subsequently left the front when he was handed command of the Army of the Potomac. It also gave those northwest Virginia delegates the opportunity to meet in Wheeling for two conventions and begin the process of forming a new state.
One obvious question loomed over the proceedings: Where should the delegates draw the boundary between Virginia and the new state? The answer involves railroads, slavery, troop movements during the war and, as always seems to be the case, politics.
“There was a group that wanted West Virginia to be reasonably small,” says historian Kenneth Noe of Auburn University. “They weren’t eager to go much farther than Charleston. There was another group that really wanted all of western Virginia down to North Carolina and Tennessee. Practically, it became a question of what could they actually control.”
Those decisions made by a small group of northwest Virginians in the 1860s continue to affect those who live in the mountains along the West Virginia border today.
Read more in my story for Blue Ridge Country about on how Virginia and West Virginia split and decided where to draw the lines that separate the two states today.
For a half-decade now, Republicans have slammed Democrats running for office in Appalachia for propagating a so-called regulatory “war on coal.”
They may find it considerably more challenging to make that argument stick against Jim Justice, owner of the largest privately held coal company east of the Mississippi River, who announced last month he’s running for the 2016 Democratic nomination for West Virginia governor. The only West Virginian in the Forbes 400, Justice is worth an estimated $1.69 billion.
Justice is not to be confused with another wealthy West Virginia coal baron, “Dark Lord of Coal Country” Don Blankenship, the former Massey CEO who will soon be tried on charges that he conspired to skirt safety regulations at Upper Big Branch mine, where a 2010 explosion killed 29 miners.
Justice too has a reputation for ignoring mine regulations, but he’s built up a positive reputation in the state in other arenas. His public images feel contradictory in a way that eludes easy caricature. (The Justice campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.)
In eastern West Virginia, Justice is beloved for buying the historic Greenbrier, a luxury resort that famously served as Congress’ personal fallout shelter, out of bankruptcy. He established a PGA event, the Greenbrier Classic (Tiger Woods is among the golfers competing this year), and built a $30 million training facility for the New Orleans Saints on the Greenbrier grounds. Justice invests lots of his time in youth sports; he’s been president of Beckley Little League since 1992 and has coached boys and girls basketball for 30 years, racking up 761 wins and 156 losses. He’s donated millions to charities such as the Boy Scouts of America, the Cleveland Clinic, and Marshall University.
At the same time, Justice’s coal companies, some inherited after his father’s death in 1993, have racked up millions in fines for labor, safety, and environmental violations. In November, NPR reported that Justice owed nearly $2 million in overdue fines.
Justice’s outsized profile means that announcement of his gubernatorial candidacy last month attracted notice from national press — more than might otherwise be expected for a first-time candidate.
Read more in my profile of Jim Justice at Grist.
Scott Pierce worked for Sherwin-Williams in Greensboro for 15 years before he cashed in his 401(k) and in 2011 moved with his wife Cassie and their two children to Floyd County, Virginia.
Eight months later, Scott and Cassie Pierce started a business making kombucha, a fermented tea that’s become popular as a pick-me-up packed with probiotics. They brewed at a kitchen in Willis and distributed their kombucha through regional farmers’ markets and the Harvest Moon health food store and Good Food Good People, both independently owned Floyd businesses selling local products.
Today, Buffalo Mountain Kombucha sells its products in Roanoke and the New River Valley. Earlier this year, the Pierces raised a little more than $16,000 on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website. They will use the money to more than double their production from about 130 gallons to about 300 gallons per week, and they’re negotiating with retailers in North Carolina and the Washington, D.C., region.
The secret to their success?
“Quite honestly, the Floyd community sticks together,” says Cassie Pierce. “We support each other and lift one another up. That made it so easy” when it came to the Kickstarter campaign.
Buffalo Mountain Kombucha is one of many small independent businesses based in Floyd. Of the 15,528 people who live in the county, according to the U.S. Census, about 1,200 are self-employed. That’s more than double the state rate, says Lydeana Martin, Floyd County’s community and economic development director.
That figure doesn’t include part-time enterprises, whether it’s trading products grown on a homestead, repairing musical instruments or providing childcare. Floyd County is chock full of farms, some of which sell commercially and others which operate solely within the region’s burgeoning barter system.
Read more in my Floyd community profile in the June issue of Roanoke Business.
About 13 gigawatts worth of coal-fired power plants are closing this year to comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule.
From a national perspective, these plants represent a fairly small chunk of the nation’s overall electrical capacity. For the communities in which they’re located, however, their closures mean much more than just a smaller carbon footprint: The resulting loss of jobs and local tax revenue leaves an economic void as well. And then there’s the question of what to do with these plants, many of which sit on land that, if it can be properly cleaned up, could be valuable for redevelopment or recreation.
Consider American Electric Power’s (AEP) plant in Glen Lyn, Virginia, a tiny town once known as Hell’s Gate that sits near the West Virginia border. The 96-year-old plant is one of seven AEP plants to be shut down by May 31. (Another two plants will be converted to burn natural gas.) All told, AEP is retiring more than 6,000 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired generating capacity.
Only 31 people worked at the Glen Lyn plant, but then, the town has a population of just 115, according to the U.S. Census. The plant’s employees and retirees are an “integral part of the community,” says Giles County Economic Development Director Chris McKlarney. “You can never replace that.”
Since it was revived in 2001, roller derby has evolved into a streamlined, highly competitive sport played by athletes who blend speed, grace and brutality. But while kitschier elements—tutus, penalty wheels and fishnets—have mostly fallen by the wayside in favor of emphasizing athleticism over spectacle, many teams still use intro music to pump up the crowd ahead of games. For Noisey, I asked the top 40 ranked WFTDA teams what they’re skating out to this year to find out which team rolls out to the dopest anthem.
Read more at Noisey, and find a playlist of the tracks at Spotify.
For what it’s worth, my personal favorite remains Iron Maiden’s “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter,” used briefly by my local Star City Roller Girls in 2007 and 2008.
Twenty-five years ago, downtown Roanoke was locked in a struggle against stagnation.
The city had poured millions of dollars into its Design ’79 initiatives a decade earlier, yet businesses and the tenants of blocks of office buildings were streaming out into the suburbs and strip malls.
Today, downtown looks dramatically different than it did in 1990. Key structures, including the iconic Roanoke City Market and Center in the Square, are coming off fresh renovations. Those former office buildings are now filled with apartments, in turn filled by empty nesters and millennials who walk to work and eat in downtown’s numerous restaurants.
The transformation came about through a combination of government incentives, visionary individuals and a fair amount of luck. The biggest single contributor, however, may well be federal and state historic tax credits that made it more profitable to renovate old buildings than tear them down.
“If you imagine Roanoke without the tax credit program, it’s a really stark portrait,” says developer Ed Walker, who has restored the Hancock Building, the Cotton Mill and the Patrick Henry Hotel among others. “It would be a completely different place. The Patrick Henry would be a parking lot … I think if you took the tax credits out, I think we’d probably be in the bleakest times in Roanoke’s history.”
Read more in my cover story for the May 2015 issue of Roanoke Business, now available in regional grocery stores and online.
The spring 2015 issue of Virginia Tech Magazine has been posted online and mailed to alumni, friends and supporters of the university.
My cover story looks back to the historic restaurants that have become part of Virginia Tech lore, and on the science why we remember these nostalgic strongholds so fondly.
I also toured VT-FIRE, the university’s foundry, and provided a behind-the-scenes look at how decades-old class rings are melted down into Hokie Gold and incorporated into new rings for the alumni of tomorrow.
I considered Virginia Tech’s growing research funding, now at more than half a billion dollars, and where President Timothy D. Sands sees it going in the future.
Finally, I profiled Brent Burger, a business-minded alumni who learned a powerful lesson at Virginia Tech.
The online version of the spring 2015 issue can be found at the Virginia Tech Magazine website.
When at the bar, never discuss politics, religion or sex, it’s said, and you’ll have a fine time.
Despite the long shelf life of that truism, all three subjects stubbornly remain hot topics for discussion while quaffing beer. When it comes to politics, that conversation may lead well beyond the barroom.
Take, for example, John Hickenlooper at Wynkoop Brewing Co., Brett VanderKamp at New Holland Brewing and Roger Baylor at New Albanian Brewing Co., who ran for governor, state senate and city council, respectively. Of the three, only two-term Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper was successful, but all three campaigns stemmed in part from the business of beer.
Their stories illustrate only the latest version of the longtime connection between politics and beer. Both, after all, are based in relationships.
Read more about the longtime link between beer and politics at All About Beer.
It was mid-afternoon on the Monday after Easter, April 5, 2010, when a 1,000-foot longwall shearer bit into sandstone, kicking up sparks and igniting a methane fireball that traveled down the mine into an area rich with coal dust.
The resulting explosion ricocheted in several directions, tearing through two and a half miles of mine, killing 29 of 31 men working in the area and searing the Upper Big Branch mine into history as the site of the most deadly coal-related disaster in nearly 40 years.
Five years later, the explosion continues to reverberate, in the courts and elsewhere.
Read my story at Grist to find out more, including coal country’s growing hostility to former Massey CEO Don Blankenship, changes to the coal industry, political ramifications and more.