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The Roanoke Times | File 1907

This scene, from a 1907 postcard, shows part of Mountain Park and Casino. The park, at the foot of Mill Mountain, was very popular in the early 1900s.

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1999 (10 years ago)

• "Henry Craighead, one of Roanoke's pioneer black baseball players and community activists, died at his home Friday. He was 72."

• "Radio sports talk is dead in the Roanoke Valley. One month after all-sports station WGMN (1240 AM) dropped 'Talkin' Sports,' its only local talk broadcast, WFIR (960 AM) has canceled 'Sports Talk Sunday,' which aired weekly from 10 a.m.-1 p.m."

• "Two droughts 18 years apart are having the same effect. They're sapping the water supply at Roanoke's Carvins Cove reservoir. ... It is almost certain that Roanokers will face mandatory water restrictions -- for what is believed to be the first time ever -- sometime in the next two weeks."

1984 (25 years ago)

• "The needs of Carvins Cove, a rural community that is little known except to the people who live there, are simply stated by one of its residents. 'It needs everything.' The Carvins Cove community has no sewer and water lines, the main road needs some curves taken out of it and some of the housing is substandard."

• "The Grandin Theater has confirmed its opening date. The movie house on Grandin Road Southwest will open with a concert by rock and rhythm and blues musician Delbert McClinton."

• "Organizers of the Scott Robertson Memorial Golf Tournament, which begins Monday at Roanoke Country Club, say they would like it to be the premier junior invitational event in the region."

• "There must be something in the drinking water in Bassett these days. Clint Wade and Thomas Joyce, both residents of the small Piedmont town known for furniture-making instead of shot-making, scored victories Tuesday in the first Scott Robertson Memorial Golf Tournament at Roanoke Country Club."

1959 (50 years ago)

• "Plans for a palatial three-story 100-room motor hotel costing over a million dollars to be built early next year on South Jefferson street opposite Hotel Patrick Henry were announced in Roanoke yesterday. It will be called the Roanoke Downtowner."

• "Fred Lawson of Roanoke has opened a recreation area for Negroes near Bedford. It is a 43-acre tract known as Tall Tree Park."

• "All opposition to the proposed merger of the Norfolk and Western and Virginian railroads apparently has crumbled."

• "Roanokers, caught in the midst of a two-week dry spell, are using water at a record-breaking pace."

• "Gala doings are planned for the opening night of the Appalachian Rookie Baseball League in Salem Thursday. A beauty queen, bands, a color guard and a number of officials will be on hand."

• "Roanokers are being deluged by a flood of obscene material in the mails, Postmaster Harold Ross said today."

• "Expert divers, fine singers, a comedian and a chorus of swimmers brought good entertainment at Victory Stadium last night. The attraction was Sam Snyder's Water Follies of 1959."

• "Dr. James G. Barringer, who has recently returned from graduate study abroad, will be the guest speaker Sunday at High Street Baptist Church. Dr. Barringer, a member of the church, will speak at 5 p.m."

• "The old YMCA building at Church avenue and Second street, SW, is going on the auction block."

• "Local drivers will be facing stiff competition from invading throttle jockeys from Richmond tonight at Starkey Speedway."

1934 (75 years ago)

• "President Franklin D. Roosevelt will dedicate the veterans' hospital rising a few miles west of the city 'about the middle of September,' but the date will not be definitely set until the president's return from his vacation trip."

• "Landing at the Municipal Airport here yesterday evening for repairs to a broken gas line fitting, a Beechcraft cabin biplane ... set a new speed record from Washington, D.C., making the 200-mile (airline) trip from the nation's capital in exactly one hour."

• "Members of the Virginia Sheriff's Association, concluding a two-day organization meeting at Salem this afternoon, went on record as favoring a State short-wave broadcasting station to aid in crime detection."

• "At midnight on a Saturday in the latter part of August the use of dial telephones in Roanoke will begin."

• "No relief was in sight from a glaring sun which by 1:15 p.m. had sent the mercury to 96, making the day the warmest June 25 since 1930."

1909 (100 years ago)

• "Expressing himself as best as he could in English that he was pleased with Virginia and West Virginia, one of South America's most noted naval officers -- Admiral Perez Garcitna, commander of the Chilean fleet of war vessels -- stopped in Roanoke last evening for several hours."

• "The Amuzu theater was packed with a happy mass of humanity last night to see the motion pictures and to hear Al Spitzer, the noted tenor singer."

• "Telegraphic dispatches from Richmond announced yesterday that Harris Hart has been elected superintendent of the public schools of Roanoke city to succeed B. Rust, the incumbent."

• "There is much interest and much talk in this community over the new macadam road from Cloverdale to Roanoke."

• "A large number of property owners and residents on Woods avenue, southwest, are complaining bitterly because of the unsanitary condition of the street in front of their houses."