Roanoke, Virginia: History
=== Early history and incorporation ===
The current site of Roanoke lies near the intersection of the Great Wagon Road and the Carolina Road, two branches of a network of early colonial roads that developed from Native American trails in the Appalachian region. While the name Roanoke is said to have originated from a Native American word for shell beads used as currency, that word was first used 300 miles (480 km) away, where the Roanoke River empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Roanoke Island. When Europeans arrived, the Roanoke Valley itself was home to members of the Tutelo tribe, a Siouan-speaking people who were gradually pushed out of the area by advancing European settlers.
Many of those settlers were Scotch-Irish who arrived in the region during the 18th and early 19th centuries following the Plantation of Ulster. They were followed by significant numbers of Germans from Pennsylvania via the Great Wagon Road. By 1838, the area was populated enough that Roanoke County was created out of parts of Botetourt and Montgomery Counties, and the area's first railroad, the Virginia and Tennessee, arrived in 1852.
The railroad built its new depot just south of a small town named Gainesborough, but named the depot after Big Lick, another small community located just to the east, which itself was named after the salt deposits that had drawn game to the area for years. Gainesborough increasingly became referred to as Big Lick (and later as Old Lick) once development drifted farther south towards the depot. Growth in the area was stalled by the Civil War; Roanoke County voted 850–0 in favor of secession and lost many of its men in the subsequent fighting. The burgeoning tobacco trade helped the region's recovery during Reconstruction. Within a decade of the war's end, there were no fewer than six tobacco factories near the Big Lick Depot.
In 1874, the community surrounding the depot applied for and received a town charter, and the Town of Big Lick was formally established. Eight years later, efforts by town boosters succeeded in securing Big Lick as the junction of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W). The two companies also relocated their respective headquarters to the town (the two lines would officially merge in 1890). Big Lick's relatively small size compared to the nearby county seat, Salem, worked in its favor as a draw for the companies. Big Lick's ample farmland and nearby water sources were well suited to the railroads' goal of building much of the town from scratch, including railroad shops, offices, a hotel, and suitable housing for their many employees. …