PEARISBURG -- After losing their last owner-operated cobbler shop last year, New River Valley residents have a new place to take their beloved and broken-in footwear.

Warner Baker of Pearisburg opened his Old Towne Shoe Repair store for the first time Saturday on Winona Avenue, across from the iconic Giles County Courthouse.

Baker does shoe repair and sells related supplies. He said he plans to do custom leather work and eventually offer orthodics to medical patients.

Saturday's opening was the culmination of a year's work, from remodeling the tiny storefront to repairing the decades-old equipment Baker collected from the families of four old-time cobblers.

"There's parts of four different shops in here," Baker said.

Equipment and advice came from the families of four of the area's well-known tradesmen: Harley Helms of Blacksburg; Vernon Altizer of Bluefield, Va.; Oakie Bishop of Christiansburg; and Sam Arena of Northfork, W.Va.

Baker said he hopes his shop will serve new customers and be a living memorial to the men who plied the trade before him. He said the shop project has felt like fate working in his life.

"I still can't believe it -- just the people who wanted to be a part of it, with equipment, with tools, with time and with knowledge," he said.

Without the help and support of family and friends, Baker said he couldn't have done it.

Five friends helped him move seven pieces of 800-pound and heavier machinery into the shop. Stitcher. Brad driver. Finisher. Solid names for solid machines made in the 1930s of all-American steel.

"They are mankillers," Baker said of the machines that take up most of the tiny shop.

The shop also provides a sense of historical continuity and serves as a modern-day reminder of the area's history. Known to locals as the old Mutter shoe shop, the spot Baker occupies has been a cobbler shop since at least the 1940s, former owner Lloyd Mutter said.

"There used to be a shoe shop in every town -- sometimes two or three of them," Mutter said.

Now they are few and far between.

From 1969 to 2001, Mutter ran the little store, selling work shoes and repairing everything from loafers to high heels. Before that, his brother, Campbell Mutter, owned the store. And before that, his other brother, Frank Mutter, ran a shop, probably as early as the '30s, Lloyd Mutter said.

Frank Mutter taught a young Harley Helms of Blacksburg the cobbler trade and eventually opened a Mutter shop in Blacksburg.

After Frank Mutter, Helms healed soles from as far away as West Virginia in his downtown Blacksburg spot until 2008.

Harley's Shoe Shop was the last known cobbler business in the NRV when he was evicted by his landlords, who rented the storefront to a wireless phone company.

By the time he quit the business in 2001, Lloyd Mutter said people wandering into his shop didn't know what to do with shoe polish, let alone want their shoes repaired. Women rarely came in at all.

Shoes are harder to repair today because in many cases, they aren't made to last. Baker said he's experimenting to find ways to fix even the "throwaway" products.

There are still good shoes out there, though, and Baker said he can install protection devices on new shoes to make them last longer.

"Everybody has something that needs a little stitch, a little patch," he said.

Mutter said he thinks orthodics is a smart way for Baker to go.

"If he can get these doctors to recommend him, he might do pretty good. If you get in on that medical market, you can get big money for that," he said.

Baker, a 36-year-old Tazewell County native, came to Pearisburg 11 years ago. For the past eight years, he's worked as a truck driver for Chandler Concrete but in his life has been the quintessential "Jack of all trades" -- sign maker, airbrush artist and cobbler.

Baker said he learned shoe repair in the mid-1990s while working in a friend's shop in West Virginia.

"And I ended up falling in love with it," he said.

Baker said he likes working with his hands and shoe repair "felt like you were doing a service for people."

He said Pearisburg is a good spot for his shop, located as it is between the rural population centers of the New River Valley and West Virginia.

Its opening also dovetails with a five-year downtown revitalization project. Construction is nearly complete on new sidewalks and streetlights. Commercial building facades have been improved and now a new business has opened.

"I've been a big believer in this town and this county for a long time. There's so much potential here," Baker said.

"It's great" to have a shoe store in Pearisburg again, said Temple Lawrence of the Giles County Historical Society and the revitalization effort.

The town needs more small, service-type businesses -- and it may be a good time for a cobbler shop, as the down economy has sparked interest in fixing things such as shoes instead of buying new, Lawrence said.