Photos by MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Trent Russell of Rocky Mount and a river guide with Tangent Outfitters stands next to his canoe after taking it out at the Fries Dam portage in the town of Fries along the New River on Wednesday. Signs worn of danger.

Jo Ann Gunter, co-owner of the New River Trail Inn in Fries, stands on the front porch of the lodge. The inn is expanding into another historic building (background), also a former boarding house for textile mill workers.

FRIES -- A kayaker's welcome to Fries isn't everything one could hope for. The first thing you see is a line of four orange-and-white barrels riding a cable across the New River. Red-and-white signs on top of three of those barrels proclaim: "DANGER DAM AHEAD."

The cable is anchored to a locust tree that holds two more signs. One, about 8 feet by 3 feet, says, "DANGER OPEN SPILLWAY." The smaller sign beneath says, "CANOE Take Out HERE."

But "here" for a handful of people taking a float trip down the New River to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the New becoming an American Heritage River is a steep bank with boot-sucking mud at its base. Once you scramble to the top and walk to where your pickup vehicle is parked, you discover that the road down to the landing is blocked by a cable padlocked to a concrete block. So you have to tote your boat and whatever's in it up to the little roadside parking area.

But don't let first impressions scare you off. If you go into town, you might meet someone like Jo Ann Gunter.

Gunter and her husband, Dillard, bought the Funk house in 2002. (Funk was the name of the family that lived there.) It's just across Main Street from the building that houses Fries' library, town hall and police station. The old Fries Theatre is in there, too, but it hasn't hosted a production in years. The town pool is out back.

"We didn't know what we were going to do with it," Gunter said. "We just bought it."

Then the Gunters met Laura and Jack Butler.

"They come down to ride the trail one time and my son had a house for sale and they bought it," Gunter said.

The Gunters and the Butlers started talking about how there was no place for visitors to stay in Fries. So the couples joined forces and turned the old Funk house into the New River Trail Inn. It opened in 2004.

Now the Butlers are renovating another, virtually identical, house next door, turning it into a guest house, too. Both buildings, which were built in 1901, are on the National Register of Historic Places.

"Both these houses, the mills built them for boarding houses," Gunter said.

Washington Mills Co. built most of Fries. The town is named after company founder Francis Fries. In 1902, a few years after Fries and some associates decided this was a good place to put a textile mill, Fries, the town, was incorporated. A year later, the mill, a dam to power it and 300 houses for its workers had been built on the edge of the New River.

Today the boarding houses built for mill workers are sheltering people getting away from work -- bikers and hikers off the New River Trail, mostly.

"I really enjoy this, meeting all the people," Gunter said.

She was busy Wednesday afternoon sweeping the porch and setting out flowers, getting everything just right. Thirteen guests were due on Thursday. Vacationers from Myrtle Beach, S.C.

This morning, the float trip organized by New River Community Partners and Tangent Outfitters was expected to leave from Foster Falls and end at Claytor Lake.