The story below is from our May/June 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Before the Roanoke Star, there was another lighted structure that captured Roanoke’s attention and imagination.
Courtesy of the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
The second observation tower on Mill Mountain stood from 1914 until 1936.
Before the Roanoke Star on Mill Mountain was illuminated in 1949, previous generations had enjoyed another signature structure in the exact same location – a lighted observation tower.
In April 1891, J. C. Rawn, president of the Roanoke Gas & Water Company, announced that a carriage road would be built to the summit of Mill Mountain and a hotel and observation tower erected. The gas company had contracted with F. D. Booth to build both Rockledge Hotel and the observation tower.
Rockledge Hotel opened on May 3, 1892. The inaugural event for the opening of Rockledge was a dinner for officials of the Norfolk & Western Railway, led by its president Frederick Kimball.
The observation tower opened a few days after Rockledge Hotel. The timber frame tower was 120 feet high and 20 feet square with two balconies, one half-way up and the other on the top. From the top platform, one could see the Peaks of Otter and past Salem. An eight by 26-foot American flag adorned the 30-foot flag pole secured at the tower’s apex. The Rockledge Hotel did not operate past a couple of years before being closed and boarded up, but the tower proved a draw to visitors and locals.
The observatory’s popularity was enhanced when a beacon was placed in the tower’s top tier. The search light was tested on July 29, 1910, for the first time and attracted significant attention. The Roanoke Times, in a front-page story the next day, reported on the event.
“People were astonished and bewildered last night. A large majority of the present residents of the city never have seen a light on Mill Mountain. In all the years they have been here they have been accustomed to see that elevation looming black and somber against the horizon; for it has been seventeen years since the lights were put out in the hotel at the crest apparently for the last time and then Roanoke had some 7,000 people, while now she has her 34,000. Probably a considerable proportion of the population hardly knows there is a hotel or any other building beside the observatory which is such a prominent object in local scenery.
As Tom O’Shanter stopped dumbfounded whence he saw the long deserted Kirk Alleyway all ablaze, so the forgetful of Roanoke gasped last night when they saw a long and dazzling shaft of light, evidently from the top of the observatory on the mountain, darting and turning capriciously, something that looked through the darkness like a small and exclusive sun newly risen in an unusual place. It was the electric search light, which will be a feature and excitement of summer nights in Roanoke hereafter, undergoing its first test.”
The beacon cast light to a distance of 40 miles and could be seen from as far away as Buchanan. The lamp had been made in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lens, 32 inches in diameter, had been ground in England. The light revolved and could be titled to any angle desired. Day and night field glasses were available to view the beacon and tower, offered by K. W. Green, a local jeweler and optician.
The search light began nightly operation in early August, illuminating the night sky. Officials quickly realized the tower needed better security, however, as a late night prankster that same month turned the light on and began having fun shining it into neighborhoods causing some Roanokers to mistake the light coming through their windows as a burglar, while others had babies and livestock awakened.
Courtesy of the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
This 1920s image shows Mill Mountain with the observation tower on its summit.
The tower’s beacon was put to a more practical use on election night in November 1910. The Roanoke Times used the light to signal election returns. Readers were provided detailed instructions as to how the signals could be interpreted. If the light moved across the valley on a horizontal plane, that signaled a general victory for Democrats in the US congressional elections. If the beam moved in a vertical manner then a Republican victory was declared. The Times even had specific flashes for US senate races and local congressional districts, all being done in a Morse code type manner.
On March 1, 1914, a severe storm swept across the Roanoke Valley and toppled the observation tower. A wind storm the previous year had moved the tower a few inches, but its frame made of 24-inch square timbers with an interior spiral staircase had withstood the elements for 23 years. By mid May, work had commenced to rebuild the Mill Mountain observatory, underwritten by the building supply firm of Adams, Payne and Gleaves, the Roanoke Water Company and the Mill Mountain Incline Company, owner of the tower. The Roanoke Railway and Electric Company had agreed to pay for replacing the searchlight at a cost of several thousand dollars. The new tower was constructed much the same as the previous one with a few exceptions. The floor would be higher and the wood frame more substantial. One added element was outlining the tower in electric lights to make even more of a luminous impression.
The new searchlight was turned on July 16 and at “10,000 candles” was more powerful than the former beacon. “The big mountain with this equipment has the appearance of a gigantic vessel plying its way across the world with its great beacon light to illumine its ways through the valleys,” reported the Roanoke Times. Later that same month, the Mill Mountain Incline Company installed a wireless receiver inside the tower that could receive from 3,000 miles. A radio transmitter within the tower was equipped to receive messages from ocean liners as well as from land based stations. The wireless station, manufactured by the Western Electric Company, used six wires strung from the tower’s flag pole across a distance of 150 feet to a 50-foot pole east of the tower. Graham Claytor, electrical engineer for the Roanoke Railway and Electric Company and Clyde Cooksey, manager of the Postal Telegraph Company, had developed the plans for the station. The station received nightly transmissions from the US Radio Station in Arlington, Virginia, as well as shipping reports and forecasts from the US Weather Bureau.
With the rebuilding of the tower, crews had also refurbished Rockledge allowing it to reopen. At the end of the inn’s 1914 season, officials decided to cut off the searchlight until the spring of 1915, a practice that would be carried forward. Thus, when Rockledge reopened each spring, the searchlight’s beam announced the occasion.
With America’s entrance into World War I, the observation tower served as a focal point for patriotic expression. On April 10, 1917, an afternoon flag-raising ceremony was held as Old Glory was hoisted on a pole affixed to the tower’s apex, as was done on the original tower. Thurman and Boone, a local furniture store, had donated the flag which had been displayed in their store window for several days. Citizens and military organizations gathered in Elmwood Park to watch. The gathering had been preceded by a parade from Market Square to Elmwood. “A large crowd of citizens and representatives of the various civic organizations of the city were in attendance at the park, all with eyes turned upward toward the mountain awaiting the first sign of the flag that is to stand as a symbol to the surrounding country of the devotion and patriotism of the Magic City,” reported the Roanoke Times.
For the next two decades the observation tower stood on Mill Mountain’s summit, but time began to take its toll. The interior wood-frame staircase became unsafe, and the beacon dimmed. There was talk by the early 1930s of razing the tower. Then on July 3, 1936, a resident in the Ghent section saw a raging fire as he looked out his window and at 3:44 p.m. he called in an alarm. The observation tower on Mill Mountain was engulfed in flames. By the time the crew from Fire Station No. 1 reached the tower, it was too late. They simply watched it burn. Speculation was that it had been struck by lightning, but the fire chief offered no conclusive determination.
Today beneath the iron legs of the Roanoke Star is a small cement pad upon which the tower stood, the only tangible reminder of another lighted fixture on Mill Mountain that dazzled generations of Roanokers a century ago.
The story above is from our May/June 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!