Brad Grose and Billy Martin
With combined experience of 34 years as local elected officials, we have seen how the landscape has changed in the greater region.
Where members of city or town councils and boards of supervisors once looked at each other suspiciously and didnât see how working together would benefit individual local governments, they now see the favorable outcomes and joint benefits of regional cooperation.
Nowhere is that more apparent than from our seats as the current and former chairmen of the Roanoke Valley Alleghany Regional Commission.
This organization has been at the forefront of the coalitions and relationships that have helped make a regional solution an early choice rather than a last resort and made the Roanoke Alleghany region one of the best examples of regional cooperation in Virginia.
CASEY: Readers write about rail-trails in the Roanoke region roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
From 1891 until 1969, you could board a passenger train in Covington and ride it to The Homestead in Bath County, along a C&O Railway spur known as the Hot Springs branch. Heading north, it followed the Jackson River, one of a handful of wild trout streams left in Virginia.
Brown and rainbow trout, some of them a foot to 18 inches long, still swim that stretch of water below Gathright Dam. But the locomotives and tracks are long gone. In their place are crushed cinders, modern bathrooms, parking areas and picnic tables.
Those comprise one of Western Virginiaâs most recent rails-to-trails projects, the 14.4-mile (and counting) Jackson River Scenic Trail. Itâs a bit more than an hourâs drive from Roanoke. Donna and I made our first visit Sunday â and it wonât be our last.
14 projects receive Project Outside grants roanoke.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from roanoke.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.