Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Fresh popcorn is available in the gift shop of the country store at Big Walker Lookout. Ron Kime's son, Mike, 38, is helping to expand the current store and gift shop.

Bob and Brenda Whittinghill of Athens, W.Va., stopped at Big Walker Lookout for the first time in nearly 40 years while on a day trip.

Old-fashioned candy sticks are displayed in the gift shop of the country store at Big Walker Lookout. Fresh popcorn is also available. Ron Kime's son, Mike, 38, is helping to expand the current store and gift shop.

WYTHEVILLE -- When it comes to business at Big Walker Lookout, Ron Kime takes the long view -- which is quite appropriate at a place where you can see three states.

The coming of Interstate 77 in the early 1970s could not kill business at this antiquated roadside attraction whose centerpiece is a 100-foot steel tower. Fire couldn't kill it, either, although it destroyed a gift shop and former restaurant on the property.

Kime built a new store and filled it with country crafts and the work of local artisans. Now, six years after that disastrous fire, Big Walker Lookout is still drawing tourists off U.S. 52, just as it's done since Kime's father built the tower near the top of Big Walker Mountain in the 1950s.

"We have people coming up here bringing the grandkids up and saying, 'When I was a boy, I climbed the tower,' " said Kime, 69, who spent his boyhood helping the family operate the lookout.

For $5, a person can still climb the tower, which shimmies and bounces with each nerve-jangling step (don't worry, Kime said his insurance company inspects the tower for safety). The climb is worth it when you reach the top and soak in the nearly 360-degree views, which include West Virginia mountains to the north and Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain to the southwest.

The attraction once boasted that you could see five states, but now Kime said that most days you can see only three: Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

"The haze and the pollution are too bad now," he said.

Still, on a clear fall day when the leaves are changing colors in the Jefferson National Forest and the red and orange mountains resemble a pile of wrinkled quilts, the view can take your breath away. Or maybe that's just the climb.

Memories from the road

Big Walker Lookout is a throwback to an age without interstates, rest areas or fast-food franchises. In the years after World War II, people drove slowly along the twisting, two-laned U.S. 52, once called the Great Lakes to Florida Highway, and stopped at family-owned roadside attractions such as the lookout.

After the interstate opened, Big Walker Lookout struggled for many years to attract visitors. These days, though, many people are opting again for the slow road, such as the Big Walker Mountain Scenic Byway, a 16.2-mile loop that includes U.S. 52 and passes the lookout.

"We're frequently in too much of a hurry," said Judy Poellot of Murraysville, Pa., who was returning from a trip to visit grandchildren in North Carolina with her husband, Jim. "We've been up and down 77 many times. We finally decided to take this loop."

Bob and Brenda Whittinghill of Athens, W.Va., know the old road well, having traveled it many times in the 1960s after they moved to West Virginia from Tennessee. They stopped by the lookout for the first time in nearly 40 years on a splendid fall morning recently.

"This road used to be heavily traveled," Bob said as he and his wife looked out from the top of the tower. "I remember there used to be a restaurant here at one time, but things have changed."

The peak years: 1947-72

Stuart Kime, Ron Kime's father, was an aircraft engineer who got the idea for the tower while working on a similar structure in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.

Near the end of World War II, he found the spot for his tower right on the Bland and Wythe county line, at an elevation of 3,405 feet. He opened a gas station and gift shop in 1947, then built a 50-foot tower himself by 1953.

He hired a company to add another 50 feet to the tower, and he and his wife, Abigail, opened a restaurant called the Pioneer Dining Room, complete with a 4,000-square-foot basement where the family lived and where Ron Kime and his sister grew up. Guy Lombardo and his orchestra once stopped at the restaurant, Ron Kime remembered.

Among Big Walker Lookout's attractions were a snake pit and a chair lift that crossed the road and climbed the mountain toward a faux moonshiner cabin.

Stuart Kime supported the construction of an interstate, even though it would take traffic off U.S. 52. He feared that if the new highway was not built through Wythe and Bland counties, north-south travelers would opt for Interstate 95 far to the east. When it became apparent that I-77 was coming through the mountains, even tunneling through them, he came up with an idea for another roadside stop -- a mock Wild West town called Dry Gulch Junction.

"He said, 'One business can't draw people off the interstate; it'll take two,' " Ron Kime recalled.

At its peak, Dry Gulch Junction looked like a movie set from an old Western, complete with restored buildings, staged gun battles between good and bad guys and train rides through the property.

Stuart Kime died in 1972, just a few months after I-77 plowed into Virginia. The lookout and Dry Gulch Junction suffered a major drop-off in visitors, as his widow kept the businesses going. Ron Kime worked as a salesman in the electronics and computer industries for years while helping his mother, who died in 2007.

Future looks bright

The 1970s and '80s were tough times for the attractions. Kime closed Dry Gulch Junction in 1980 after a series of country music concerts were a financial washout. That property was sold and reopened as Virginia City in 1999 but closed last year.

The Kimes even turned over operation of the lookout to another couple in the early 1990s, but Ron and his mother took it back around 1992 -- right about the time the scenic byway opened.

When the old gift shop burned in 2003, probably because of an electrical fire that started near a heater, Kime did not hesitate to rebuild. He wants the business to stay in the family, where it's been for most of the past 62 years. His son, Mike, 38, is the third generation of the family to work at the lookout, and he is helping expand the current store and gift shop.

Ron, his wife, Diana, and his sister, Linda Hedrick, also run the Old Fort Antique Mall along I-81 near Max Meadows. Longtime manager Anne Britton helps run the place most days.

Big Walker Lookout, which used to be open only from spring to fall, is now open year-round. History tours and bluegrass music are on the weekend schedule through the end of the month.

Ron Kime estimates that business is up nearly 25 percent over last year. He has plans for the future, such as starting a trolley to the mountaintop.

"This type of attraction is unique now," he said. "There were hundreds of them in the '50s, now there are none."