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The Roanoke Times

File The Roanoke Machine Works shops, later the Norfolk & Western Railway shops, were built in 1882 and 1883. This photograph was taken in 1886.

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More history stories

• 1999 (10 years ago)
• Looking Back
• Looking back: Nov. 2, 2009
• Looking Back: Oct. 26, 2009
• Looking back: Oct. 19, 2009

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1999 (10 years ago)

• "After mulling it over for more than a decade, Vinton has decided how to develop the McDonald Farm"

• "Some think Miniature Graceland is a quaint local landmark, something worth driving by at Christmas time. Others see it as an eyesore and a traffic hazard, something worth only the cost of tearing it down. Anne Cheney, a Virginia Tech English professor, believes Mini-Graceland is a cultural artifact equivalent to those in the Art Museum of Western Virginia, something worth preserving."

1984 (25 years ago)

• "Mayor Noel Taylor wants the restoration of the Henry Street area in Roanoke's Gainsboro neighborhood completed within two years."

• "Roanoke City Council is expected to be asked soon to approve the construction of a reception center on the top of Mill Mountain."

• "Jim Peters of the Salem Lions Club set a record this week for signing eye donors with a little help from his family. He signed his grandson, Michael Gillespie, as his 20,000th eye donor."

• "Despite petitions containing more than 1,700 signatures and personal appeals from hunters and trappers, Roanoke City Council rejected a request Monday night to open the Carvins Cove watershed to bow hunting and trapping."

• "Salem City Council Monday night authorized City Manager William J. Paxton Jr. to negotiate with Roanoke officials for a permanent connection between the two water systems."

1959 (50 years ago)

• "Work on the Towers Shopping Center on a 30-acre site at Brandon avenue and Colonial avenue, SW, will begin Monday."

• "Radio station WDBJ of Roanoke won the 1959 Douglas Southall Freeman Award for public service through radio journalism."

• "Starting today, Oct. 4, 1959, The Roanoke Times will devote a portion of the Sunday paper to the local teen-agers."

• "Mountain View, a new elementary school in Roanoke County, will open for the first time tomorrow."

• "Roanoke College opened what Coach Elwood Fox thinks will be a 'pretty good' soccer season yesterday with a 2-1 nod over visiting Virginia Military Institute."

1934 (75 years ago)

• "When it comes to civic pride one youngster here has it in abundance. He has a Boston bull puppy, but insists it is a 'Roanoke bull.' He probably eats Roanoke baked beans, too."

• "The William Byrd High School has the largest senior class in the history of the school. The class had 79 members this year."

• "Imposition of a $2.50 fine on a Roanoke motorist in Traffic Court today for failure to stop at an arterial street protected by a 'stop' sign set a precedent for local traffic laws. It was the first time that anyone has been convicted for such an offense, it is said."

• "The performance of this play ['The Green Pastures'], on its second visit to Roanoke ... offered to those who went a variety of religious experience that can not soon be forgotten."

• "A hard driving Bluefield State Teachers College team nosed out Hampton Institute 7 to 6 in a Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association game yesterday afternoon at Maher Field."

• "Soccer -- for girls and women -- is going to be played here. K. Mark Cowen, city recreation director, announced plans for the organization of a league with Miss Gladys Haring as director."

• "Roanoke College gridders will bid goodbye to Salem and the alma mater on five successive week-ends now that they have registered their first win, a dazzling, deceptive 38-0 performance over Guilford College."

1909 (100 years ago)

• "What the Norfolk and Western is planning to do at the shops here has been for some days the subject of much interesting and cheerful comment. This morning it was reported that the company would build at once four thousand cars and twenty engines."

• "The Florence Crittenton Home was entirely destroyed by fire this morning."

• "The pick of Roanoke's footballists make up the Roanoke team for this season, and every man is being put into splendid shape to contest with any team that will confront the sturdy aggregation."

• "The first semi-annual opening of MacBain and Hyslup, Inc., the well known dry goods and furnishing store of this city, took place last evening in the presence of hundreds of ladies, who were delighted with the grand display of goods, useful as well as ornamental."

• "When the Barnum and Bailey Greatest Show on Earth visits Roanoke ... people hereabouts will have an opportunity of seeing a number of the best trained animal acts in the history of the circus business."