The Story of a Country Road

The .002 mile over Rabbit Run to the Craighead driveway. This alteration in Back Creek Road was made c. 1910. (photo 1982) The Story of a Country Road by Lynn Dickerson, II A country road, as Lyn Dickerson indicates in his last paragraph, may well be an oblique history—an all but hidden image, of an area and its people that reveals itself fully only by careful study and record search. In an age of rapid change and cultural dislocation, it may tell, if by contrast only, who we are and "where we're at"—so being a pointer to where home might be. For some it still leads toward the only home we will ever know. Some people call it the "Corduroy Road"; others, the "Old County Road" or the "Wagon Road." Deed hooks, court order books, and road order books refer to it as the "Back Creek Road." Beginning as Route 640 some two miles southwest of Buchanan in Botetourt County, it follows Back Creek in a westerly direction along the northern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains to an intersection with Route 606, the old Fincastle-to-Buford turnpike. Leaving its State maintenance status behind it, the old road then plunges into the forest at Camp Bethel to emerge at the Lemon homeplace as Routes 647 and 711. After leaving Rabbit Run, headwaters of Back Creek, and passing the old Shay house, the road again disappears into farm and forest land. Continuing on its westerly course over foothills and through mountain hollows, it passes Troutville, some3 The Back Creek Road: 1840-1982 to Fincastle to Buchanan —· . Brugh's Mm^=-^^ Obenchain Houston INacel Depot Dudding to Buchanan —¦ Payton - " !Route 640G îê»i^'C^^^ÇÎÎëOiÏÏSldT^ LL882M98 .-¦ß?^ß® Linkenhoker LMcFarlane 11860-18721 „C*mP XJl _ . . ., IPrice-Dickerson,Bethel xc Craighead1918-19821 LnTTf^a^yeek Road Fellers loverdale Furnace Lemon Troutville Commissary 11918-19751®, Deal Mine T Houston Mines Q Old Ore Bank Blue Ridge Mountains Lemon [1855-19101 Price 1191819601 Botetourt County State of Virginia From Ford to Bridge'· The 1910 Alteration times as a State road and sometimes as a wagon road, on its way to the Old Ore Bank near Cloverdale. The Back Creek Road has a venerable history. In the early nineteenth century it was the only alternative to traveling the Southwestern Turnpike for those who wished to go from the vicinity of Cloverdale to Buchanan. The old road, moreover, was the only way to move ore from the mines on the north slopes of the Blue Ridge to the furnaces and from the furnaces to the barges on the James River and Kanawha Canal at Buchanan. Thus it is not surprising that many who used the road had an interest in mining and that the road appears to have been especially important during the Civil War. References to the road appear frequently in deed books. An 1840 deed in the chain of title to the William B. Shay property on Route 711 notes that the boundary line comes to a point "in the middle of Back Creek road [sic] thence with the said road as it meanders 100 poles to a stake in the middle of said road."1 The description is the same in the deed conveying the parcel of land from Henry and Milly Kelly to William B. Shay in 1849.2 In 1936 when the Shay heirs deeded their interst in the Shay property to Bage Shay, their brother, in appreciation for his taking care oftheir deceased mother, the deed again notes that the boundary line for one ofthe parcels follows "the old Back Creek Road."3 Similar references appear in the deed to the Lemon property on Route 647. In 1855 Joel B. Lemon bought 254 acres from the firm of Anderson, Shanks and Anderson "lying on Back Creek & its waters" for seventeen hundred and seventy-eight dollars. Beginning at "2 chestnuts and a chestnut sapling on a line of Samuel Obenchain," the Lemon property line follows the Obenchain line south thirty-five degrees west for sixty-six and one half poles to "2 red oak sprouts from one stump on the west side of Back Creek road" and continues with the road...