Apart from Asheville at its southern end, Roanoke (pop. 94,911) is the only real city that can claim it’s actually on the Blue Ridge Parkway. With block after block of brick-fronted business buildings, most of them adorned with neon, metal, and painted signs that seem unchanged since the 1940s, Roanoke contrasts abruptly with the natural verdancy of the rest of the Parkway, but you may find it a welcome change after so many trees. Once a busy, belching, industrial Goliath supported by the railroads, Roanoke has evolved into a sophisticated, high-tech city—the commercial, cultural, and medical center of southwest Virginia.
Roanoke’s main visitor attractions lie right downtown in the Center in the Square complex (540/342-5700), a restored warehouse that holds a wide variety of cultural offerings, including theaters, an art museum (free), a kid-friendly science museum ($6), and a local history museum. Also worth a look is the Virginia Museum of Transportation (daily; $7.50; 540/342-5670), three blocks west of Center in the Square at 303 Norfolk Avenue, which displays lots of old cars and trucks, steam and diesel locomotives, and horse-drawn carriages, plus a complete traveling circus—minus the performers, of course. Steam trains, as documented by Roanoke-based photographer O. Winston Link, are the real highlight of the museum, and a short walk away at 101 Shenandoah Avenue, inside Roanoke’s streamlined 1930s-era Norfolk & Western Railroad passenger station, the new O. Winston Link Museum (daily; $5; 540/982-LINK) displays more than 200 of the photographer’s indelible black-and-white images. There’s also a neat gallery devoted to the building’s legendary designer, Raymond Loewy, who created the Coke bottle, the logo for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and hundreds of other all-American icons.
On Mill Mountain high above Roanoke, the 100-foot-tall “World’s Largest Man-Made Star” shines nightly, lit by 2,000 feet of neon tubing. You can drive up to the base of it and get a grand view over Roanoke.
Skyline Drive
