Psst! Some of your heritage may be vanishing.

That's the message of the annual endangered sites list produced by the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation, a 21-year-old nonprofit organization that labors to protect the structures and landscapes that lend the region its sense of place.

George Kegley, chairman of the foundation's endangered sites and awards committee, estimated Friday that about 20 percent of the areas included in the foundation's previous lists have been saved. The rest have fallen to demolition, neglect or inappropriate development, or are "still hanging on a cliff," he said.

More than 100 sites have been included on lists the foundation began issuing in 1996.

This year's list was released this week after the foundation's annual meeting.

In a news release, Mike Kennedy, the president of the foundation's board, called this year's list "particularly disturbing because it contains several buildings that are in use or have recently been in use."

"To have significant buildings that one year are viable, useful and contributing to the character of their neighborhoods, and slated for destruction the next, is upsetting."

The list is led by a cluster of vacant industrial buildings in an area of Southeast Roanoke that stretches from the Virginia Scrap Iron &Metal Co. site on South Jefferson Street to the Adams, Payne & Gleaves livery stable, the Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works and street car barn, and the one-time Heironimus warehouse. Some of the structures are a century old, according to a foundation news release.

The foundation is calling for the area to be redeveloped into shops, lofts, a restaurant and more after an environmental cleanup paid for by a grant already acquired by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

Other sites on the list include:

n Roanoke Fire Station No. 7 on Memorial Avenue, built in 1922, which may be replaced by a larger station.

n The former Downtown Learning Center, a one-time theater at the corner of Luck Avenue and Second Street Southwest that was built in 1936 and is owned by Greene Memorial United Methodist Church. The learning center moved after a pipe burst. The foundation release said the building has a long-term problem with storm water running into the building, and may be torn down for parking.

n A former parsonage on the Hollins University campus. Built in 1888, the clapboard-sided house was bought by the school in 1923 and has been used for faculty apartments and studios.

n A steel truss bridge in the Lafayette community of Montgomery County. Built in 1917 in Giles County and moved to its present location in 1958, the bridge carries Cannery Road across the North Fork of the Roanoke River. The Virginia Department of Transportation is slated to replace it with a concrete structure, the foundation said.

n The Boaz-Denton house in Daleville, built in the 1870s and now unoccupied. Construction materials are stacked around the structure and a partially built retaining wall lines a recent hillside cut beneath its windows. The house was being converted to become a Teaberry's Restaurant, but the business chose another location.

n A vacant two-story Victorian home on Union Street in Salem, built in 1801 and once home to the Hester family.

n Several mountainsides that are undergoing logging operations, including 12 O'Clock Knob, the Dixie Caverns area, Fort Lewis Mountain, Stewart's Knob and Buck Mountain near Clearbrook.

Kegley said he hoped the sites on this year's list would follow the path of the Patrick Henry Hotel or Roanoke's so-called "lost locomotives," both of which were featured in past foundation lists before renewal efforts took hold.

Kegley took pains to say the foundation doesn't oppose development -- its members just think it's better to keep the region's older structures in use.

"So often they're better than the new ones," Kegley said.