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Location
Downtown north to the city limits.
Features
Every town has a strip. Williamson Road is Roanoke’s strip, and it’s a doozy: a highway ribbon chock-a-block with car lots, restaurants, service shops, ethnic grocery stores, churches, neon signs, junk stores, schools, banks, a civic center, a library, you name it.
Ah, but it used to be such a mess. Some might argue that it’s still a mess, but they wouldn’t have been here in the ‘70s and ‘80s to see Williamson Road at the height (or rather depth) of its ugliness.
Williamson Road has made a lot of progress toward respectability in the past 25 years, thanks to its residents and businesses, and a commitment of millions of dollars from the city to improve the streetscape, alleviate storm-water flooding and crack down on the elements that made a trip down Williamson Road in the ‘80s a true walk on the wild side. Porn shops, X-rated movie houses, strip joints, adult book stores, tattoo parlors (before ink was in for everybody and her mother), massage parlors and other dubious businesses. That was Williamson Road in the 1980s.
History
The area through which Williamson Road passes was settled in the first half of the 18th century by pioneers moving down The Great Road from the northeast to Virginia and North Carolina. Some of these pioneers stayed in the Roanoke Valley and settled on large farms northeast of what would become Big Lick and then Roanoke. Their names have become part of our history: Mark Evans, William Watts, Gen. James Breckinridge, plus Reads, Garsts, Harshbargers, Moomaws. This scenic land remained rural and in the hands of just a few owners until the 1850s.
Until 1912 there was no Williamson Road. What is now Tenth Street was the only road of consequence in the area. Residents petitioned Roanoke County for a road that would lead to downtown. Several residents provided the funding, land and machinery to build the road and the state provided prisoners for the labor.
To gain the right of way, the state had to condemn farmland belonging to a family named Williamson. Apparently the family wasn’t too keen on the idea of losing their land or their consolation prize of having the road named for them. The city got Williamson Road north of Orange Avenue in 1949 with a massive annexation from Roanoke County which included 12 square miles and 16,000 people.
According to the city’s Williamson Road Area Plan developed in 2004, the era following World War II is when the real building boom came. Between 1940 and 1960, more than 3,500 lots were developed. Postwar prosperity, housing shortages, new mortgage-lending practices, and the automobile all combined to make the area both accessible and desirable to people seeking suburban home ownership.
Significance
Williamson Road itself became not only a way to get to Roanoke but a part of a national highway system that sustained the traveling public before the Interstate system was created. In 1923 Williamson Road became part of the Lee Highway System connecting Washington D.C. and Bristol, and in 1932 it became part of U.S. 11 connecting upstate New York to New Orleans.
Roanoke historian Nelson Harris wrote in his “Roanoke in Vintage Postcards” book, “Although inconvenient by today’s interstate standards, Route 11 was one of the most traveled and scenic highways in Western Virginia.”
As U.S. 11 became the Route 66 to the South, motels, gas stations, drive-in restaurants and the rest of the automobile age’s support system sprang up along Williamson Road, including the fabulous Crossroads Mall at Williamson and Hershberger, Virginia’s first enclosed shopping center. There were motels galore: Roanoke Motor Lodge, Howard Johnson, Air Castle Court, Shangri La, Hitching Post, Big Oak, to name a few. Archie’s Lobster House, Biff Burger, Little Chef, Esso, Texaco, Pure—all erected giant neon signs to compete for attention.
By the 1960s Williamson Road had become a strip. With its straight lines, abundant stoplights, and drive-in restaurants (think “American Graffiti”), it also became a favorite place for teenagers to cruise and drag race late at night.
What Happened?
Given the choice in the 1970s of a faster, more direct route, travelers jumped onto I-81 and I-581 reducing the need for all those Williamson Road motels and gas stations. New businesses moved in to take their place and they weren’t always to the liking of the surrounding neighborhoods, which, through it all, have managed to remain strong and attractive.
The Roanoke Times reporter Kevin Kittridge wrote a story on Williamson Road in 1998 which chronicled its history and its slink into seediness in the 1980s. The late Elizabeth Bowles, a 58-year resident and Williamson Road business owner and 20-year member of Roanoke City Council, described to Kittridge what happened while no one was paying attention. “All of a sudden we kind of woke up and they (sex shops) were everywhere. I counted 28 of them. We realized something had to be done.”
She and others got busy to mount a long and successful fight to save their neighborhood. They founded the Williamson Road Action Forum and later its business arm the Williamson Road Area Business Association. Both still exist, but the latter is far more active today in advocating for and protecting the Williamson Road area.
Kittridge’s article outlined the city’s plans then on the drawing board to improve the street scape with traffic calming islands, wider sidewalks, crosswalks, spruced-up major intersections, redesigned storefronts and more tasteful signs, adding tongue in cheek, we presume, “For worse or better, Williamson Road as we know it may be doomed,” implying its rustic charm could be lost. He even asked a fortune teller on the strip to predict the future of Williamson Road. She said: “They’re really going to work on it. They’re going to give it a kind of pick-me-up… make (it) look better. It just needs a little tender loving care. A bit of affection. That’s all.”
For the most part the fortune teller was right. Most of those improvements were made and more are on the way, especially with the upcoming renovation of the Williamson Road library, long a hub of activity in the neighborhood.
As for cruising, it’s still an issue, but most have accepted it and even embrace the tradition with the annual Star City Motor Madness, which celebrated its 15th anniversary in June. The trademarked event bills itself as “a celebration of America’s passion for the automobile and the love of cruising.” It is one of the largest such events in the Mid-Atlantic region with a Friday night cruise-in on “Roanoke’s historic strip” and a day-long car and truck show in downtown Roanoke. Proceeds go to—what else? The Virginia Museum of Transportation.
Hey, if you have a great strip, why not flaunt it? Vroom! Vroom!