It's a history with some dark spots, but then all human histories are.

Early Roanoke was muddy, boisterous, often derided as a frontier town. There were too many ugly racial incidents for comfort, such as the 1893 riot that left 10 people dead, including one hanging from a tree.

But it's not for nothing that Roanoke, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, was once known as the Magic City. In the 19th century, it grew from a wide spot in the road to a thriving railroad hub in barely a generation. It has developed from a cultural wasteland known for bars and ladies of the night to a mountain metropolis with cultural offerings some larger cities might envy. In recent years, the city has refused to die from the loss of its industrial bedrock, repositioning itself instead as a regional medical center and mecca for the arts.

Along the way, many a true hero has come and gone, as well as a colorful character or two.

Black educator Lucy Addison started teaching here in an era when most black people still could not read or write. She died in 1937. Junius Blair Fishburn was the very definition of a self-made man, rising to the top of the local banking and media world despite his lack of formal education. He donated Mill Mountain to the city in the 1940s. Julian Stanley Wise started the city's, and arguably the country's, first emergency lifesaving crew in 1928. Mayor Henry Trout, a twice-wounded Civil War veteran, was shot again while confronting a Roanoke lynch mob in 1893.

And then there were the visionaries who in the early 1980s dreamed up Center in the Square, the arts and cultural complex that helped turn downtown around.

Here are a few gems, large and small, that we unearthed while poring over Raymond Barnes' "A History of the City of Roanoke" and spading through newspaper archives in recent weeks for the story of Roanoke's past:

• A Roanoke Evening News reporter encountered inventor Thomas Edison smoking a cigar at the Hotel Roanoke in May 1906. He found him "plain as an old shoe."
• Clara Black, long known as Roanoke's "first lady of the theater," directed her first play here in 1911, and her last in 1968.
• And in 1919, the Women's Civic Betterment League established the city's first public restroom for women on Salem Avenue, to cater to lady shoppers. It brought new life to the street, which had suffered under Prohibition from the closing of downtown pubs.

No one can tell Roanoke's history in a single Sunday article -- legendary historian Raymond Barnes wrote 800-plus pages on the Star City, and barely got to the Mill Mountain Star. For today's pullout timeline on Pages 6 and 7, we've attempted to pluck out some of the highs and lows from the Star City's first 125 years, and to give some of the flavor of life here, which makes it different from life anywhere else. It could have been twice as long, and included such events as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's historic visit to dedicate the veteran's hospital in Salem in 1934, when people lined Roanoke streets for miles, yelling "Hail to the chief" as he passed; the dedication of Roanoke's Civic Center in 1971; and the opening of Valley View Mall in 1985. And, of course, much, much more.

So what does the next 125 years hold?

Who knows? Roanoke has suffered its blows, with plant closings and the railroad merger that diminished it as a railroad town. But it has also seen the rebirth of such local icons as the Hotel Roanoke, Jefferson High School and the Dumas Hotel, and the slow diversification of its economy.

And whatever you think of the new Randall Stout-designed Art Museum of Western Virginia currently rising across the railroad tracks from the Hotel Roanoke, no one is likely to look at the finished product in two years and think of a city whose day is gone.