Tommy Denton

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Standing next to the railroad tracks at the bridge where Tinker Creek flows into the Roanoke River, Rupert Cutler surveyed the quiet setting with an evident sense of serenity.

His arm gesturing in a wide sweep across the richly wooded ridgeline across the river, then pointing to the thick vegetation along the near bank, he said, "I just love land like this."

A gentle breeze caressed the balmy spring afternoon as the air carried the trilling symphony of bird calls. The sunlight glinted off the current as the river flowed past reddish-brown boulders in midstream.

Cutler can properly claim a lineage with such naturalists as John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, forebears who combined a love of nature with a determination to preserve its splendor.

Former member of the Roanoke City Council, current member of the board of directors of the Western Virginia Water Authority and former director of Explore Park from 1991 to 1997, Cutler also holds a bachelor degree in wildlife management and a doctorate in resource development, was assistant secretary of agriculture in the Carter administration, was a vice president of the National Audubon Society and an assistant executive director of the Wilderness Society.

Not only does Cutler love nature, he's more than qualified to speak with authority in advocating its proper stewardship. That's why I had asked Cutler to show me the river that has become for him a neglected, and therefore unfulfilled, opportunity with enormous potential for Roanoke in particular and Western Virginia in general.

So we spent several hours last week examining the array of characteristics of the waterway and its environs, going to different points along the river, from Explore Park near where it flows into Smith Mountain Lake to the Tinker Creek confluence to the new waste water treatment plant at Vinton to Wasena Park and several other points upstream.

Cutler has been proposing to anyone who cared to pay attention -- but especially those who have not -- that proper, comprehensive development of the Roanoke River would yield almost unimaginable benefits for the civic, economic, aesthetic and cultural dimensions of life in the environs through which the Roanoke River courses.

Since the earliest days of settlement, the river has been considered by railroad officials, manufacturing executives and far too many other community leaders as an available disposal system, rather than an amenity to cherish and develop.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act passed in the 1970s, at least the degradation of the river began to reverse and some improvements begun. Even now, decades later, the flood-reduction/greenway project now under construction represents a minimalist response to the nurturing of a natural asset with boundless potential to improve the community's ambiance, quality of life and attractiveness as a tourist destination and an even more agreeable place to live.

That is Cutler's dream, and such was the gleam in the eye of the noted landscape architect John Nolen who, a century ago, offered his prescription to residents of Roanoke for developing their community:

"In the selection of parks and public reservations," Nolen wrote in his 1907 report, "Roanoke has a golden opportunity, one that any city in the land might envy. Its rivers, hills and rural country, its creeks and the views of its surrounding mountain ridges, are singularly available and beautiful beyond description. And with the exception of the ravages of the railroads, they are as yet almost unspoiled for public use."

Nolen proposed the municipal purchase of both banks of the river within the city and Tinker Creek.

"It would seem as if an obligation rested upon the public spirited members of the present generation," Nolen wrote, "to secure a reasonable share of these natural resources of the community before it is too late and set them apart for the public for all time to come."

Well, things didn't quite work out, and so many opportunities available a century ago went by the boards. Cutler, however, has proposed to build on Nolen's vision and create a continuous linear park and greenway, combined with a comprehensive residential and commercial development plan along the river and above the flood plain.

In my Sunday column, I'll discuss why Cutler's plan, even a century late, deserves support.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.