The story below is from our May/June 2020 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Botetourt County celebrates an anniversary, and with it, new opportunities for residents and visitors. (Please note their schedule may have changed at time of press.)
Dan Smith
Botetourt County Museum
Botetourt County is so old and so full of history that it will take several organizations to help it celebrate its 250th anniversary beginning in May. The county predates the Declaration of Independence by five years and the Constitution by 17 years.
Ground Zero for the celebration will be the Historical Society of Western Virginia (HSWV), sharing the O. Winston Link Museum downtown. Among other organizations taking part in the months-long reverie will be the Botetourt County History Museum and the Taubman Museum of Art.
“Our summer blockbuster exhibit will be Botetourt County: 250 Years of Delights and will run from May 28 through November 7,” says Ashley Webb, curator of collections for the Historical Society of Western Virginia.
The first exhibit of the year was “Light & Shadow: Photographs by Jimmy Deck,” closing May 5. Other museums in the region will have special events through the year, recognizing Botetourt.
The HSWV has been searching for a higher profile since it left Center in the Square in 2017 and even though it has less space than it had at Center, “it makes sense to be here,” says board president Andy Stone.
Board member Sandra Kelly is more precise: “It is difficult to support two museums [HSWV and the Link] with donations.”
Center in the Square was facing something of an identity crisis in 2017 and wanted to change its approach. It lost the History Museum, but expanded with a children’s permanent exhibit and introduced the popular (and lucrative) Pinball Museum, among others.
The new space for the HSWV is half the size it had at Center and has no storage, but “it’s convenient to have it all together,” says Stone.
The museum continues to “find the right things, what will appeal to people,” says Kelly. Could be that Botetourt County will be that “thing.”
Botetourt was initially an enormous county that included all of Kentucky and its borders went to the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. Fincastle was the county seat and retains the archives. Botetourt began as part of Augusta County but broke off and those counties consisted of what is now six states.
“Things have been disorganized [since moving from Center],” says Stone. “It’s settled down and we can better focus on exhibits and raising our profile.”
The popular Jimmy Deck exhibit is a good example of what Webb calls “thinking outside the box.” Deck is an amateur photographer, model railroader and historian whose interests are varied and widely popular.
Board member Carol Fralin says there is a new emphasis on the 20th century and the cultural background of the area. To that end, the HSWV has hired an educator (retired Naval officer Rich Davis) as a consultant to go with the museum’s two full-time employees (Webb and Lynsey Allen, the museum manager) and three part-timers, as well as a raft of volunteers.
Botetourt County’s anniversary is not just a cause for celebration in these mountains, it also presents the Historical Society of Western Virginia a prime opportunity to reintroduce itself to an old audience and bring in a new one.
To read more from our May/June 2020 issue, Subscribe Today. Thank you for supporting local journalism!