Author Archives: Vickie Holt

Pine Creek Primitive Church and Cemetery

Posted on by

People who settled in the Floyd County area began holding religious services by 1795, and Pine Creek Primitive Baptist Church is one of the earliest churches established. It was founded in 1803 when four members of Salem Church – also known as Head of the River – were dismissed to form Pine Creek Primitive Baptist. They established the church just off the road leading to Spangler’s Mill. The initial property conveyance occurred in 1804 when Thomas Goodson conveyed five acres for the establishment of a church and graveyard at the site.

The current building is actually the second church constructed at this site. Due to age and fire, the first building was replaced around 1881, and has remained relatively unchanged since. However, the original stone foundation was replaced with cinderblock, and the roof was replaced at some point with corrugated metal.
Continue reading →

Buffalo Mountain Ziplines Has a New Owner

Posted on by

(From left to right: Robert Nickell, John McEnHill, and Joanna Nickell)

Former Chamber of Commerce leader, John McEnhill, is still somewhat amazed at how he ended up owning Buffalo Mountain Ziplines. He had announced plans to retire from his position as Executive Director in 2020 to pursue a business concept, but those plans were put on hold during the pandemic as he pivoted toward helping the Chamber and its members navigate the pandemic challenges.

He had been considering options for owning and operating a business for several years, but the pandemic also impacted his business concept, so he began pursuing other options. Eventually, McEnhill put in several purchase offers for commercial real estate in Floyd County.

“These offers helped clarify what was or wasn’t a good fit for me,” McEnhill recalls. “I had looked at the Buffalo Mountain Ziplines listing several times over several months until one day something clicked, and I asked myself, why not?”
Continue reading →

An Historic Place of Learning Will Continue Teaching About the Past

Posted on by

Located at 880 Little Valley Road in Carroll County, within Meadows of Dan, is an historic treasure that is getting a second chance to shine.

It was during the early 1900’s when Carroll County’s schoolboard recognized the need for additional schoolhouses to serve the growing community. The project eventually saw the construction of several schools, built on carefully selected sites, so children would not have to walk more than five miles from their homes along the dirt roads and animal trails. One of these sites, located at milepost 185 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, became known as the Little Valley Schoolhouse.

Construction on the schoolhouse began in 1929 when the Jessup family donated the land to the School Board of Carroll County. In turn, Carroll County provided funds to build the schoolhouse. Local residents provided the needed labor and a nearby sawmill provided the building materials, most of which were sourced from local oak and chestnut trees. It was a genuine community effort, meant to provide opportunities for the children of the families living there.
Continue reading →

New Life Brings New Beginnings to the Floyd EcoVillage

Posted on by

On March first of 2022, the quietness of the predawn hours was interrupted by the sound of a tiny bleat. A wooly brown dairy sheep named Siren had given birth to an adorable ram lamb. The precious baby was black with a white head and white socks, pink nose, and floppy black ears. He was also the first of nine lambs to be born at Floyd EcoVillage.

Large fields, bright skies, and friendly visitors are but a few of the experiences these tiny floofs can look forward to during their time on the seventy-five-acre property of the EcoVillage. There, they will be in the company of sixteen other sheep, two rams and fourteen ewes, as well as two nervous but attractive cows. This happy collection will be kept and cared for in the paddock located between the earth-bermed lodge and the pond, overlooked by the Event Center. Guests are encouraged to visit the animals while walking the trails but are not allowed to enter the pens without a staff member.
Continue reading →

Candid and Creative with Kelly Phillips Photography

Posted on by

Kelly Phillips has been interested in photography since her eighth birthday, when her parents gifted her a Kodak 110 cartridge camera. Like a flash, Kelly was snapping and shooting everything in sight. Anything that caught her eye, or her interest, ended up on film. She often wonders if her parents ever regretted having to develop so much film! But by the end of that first summer, she had photographed friends, flowers, leaves, interesting moss, bark on the trees, and views from her treehouse. “I photographed everything I saw,” says Kelly. “Capturing all the little details of my yard.”

During her high school years, however, photography had to take a back seat to the many after-school activities that kept her busy. She would have loved for her high school to have a photography course, or even a club. It wouldn’t be until after graduation, however, that Kelly was able to dive back into the fascinating art of capturing a moment, an expression, a perspective, or even a detail, then letting the whole world see it through her eyes.
Continue reading →

Roberson Mill Restoration

Posted on by

While sitting in her car outside the front of Roberson Mill with the warm sun pouring through the windows, Regina Roberson Cox muses about the many childhood days she spent inside. Visions of those younger, carefree times produce a keen sense of belonging to the historic building.

She remembers a time when the cogwheels were turning, one dependent on the other, to rotate the big millstones. The sounds were deafening as the old wheel outside pushed water over its top. It was loud enough to force anyone inside or outside to raise their voices to be heard in conversation.
Continue reading →

From Moran’s Meat & Grocery to Willis Village Mart: They Grew and Modernized, but Kept Their Country Charm

Posted on by

by Vickie Holt

When most people think of Floyd, Virginia, they think of the charming downtown district with its shops, music venues, and art galleries.  But there is so much more to be found in the wider community of the county.  Floyd County contains the towns of Check, Copper Hill, Indian Valley, and Willis.
It’s in the town of Willis, Virginia, that S. Peter Willis and Silas Garrett Conduff got together to open a general store for the community.  This was around 1883, and the wooden-built shop could be found just about eleven miles southwest of downtown Floyd along Floyd Highway South.
Originally, this little community was called Greasy Creek, but in 1880, the name was changed to Hylton.  This was to honor the Helton family who operated a store and post office there.  It was around this time, however, that the Willis family settled in the area and began operating businesses in the community.  Because of their influence, and because the Hylton Post Office was getting confused with the Hilton Post Office in another part of Virginia, the name of the town was changed to Willis in 1894.  S. Peter Willis was a member of that influential family, and his partner, Silas G. Conduff, was the first postmaster under the town’s Willis name.
Continue reading →

Taking Local Hemp to the Next Level

Posted on by

From left to right: Daniel Sowers & Derek Wall

Budding interest in hemp and cannabis in Virginia has led to healthy growth for The Buffalo Hemp Company.  Having already established the Floyd location in 2019, TBHC has been so successful that it was not only able to open the second location at 1110 Main Street in Roanoke but has recently opened a third location at 208-A N. Main Street in Blacksburg!  They are also pleased to announce that they have outgrown the original Floyd location at 315 East Main Street and relocated to a more spacious, historic building at 710 East Main Street.  Co-owner Derek Wall attributes the company’s success to local relationships, persistence, and commitment to continuous evolution.
“We were fortunate to begin with our own crop, our products, and our own brand,” says Wall.  But Wall and his business partner, Daniel Sowers, soon found that there were a lot of people growing excess hemp.  This led to TBHC growing less of their own crop every year and opting instead to support local farmers who could grow hemp that met the company’s needs for quality and safety.
Continue reading →

Floyd Legend Hands the Torch to Exciting New Restaurant

Posted on by

by Vickie Holt

American Pie Restaurant is one of Floyd’s newest eateries, taking up residence in a building recently vacated by one of its oldest.  After thirty years, Ray’s Restaurant had become a legendary fixture in the Floyd community, located at 1041 Floyd Highway, North.
The structure itself was built in 1910.  In the 1940’s, Ray’s father, Donald Hatcher, owned it, running the location as a grocery store and gas station.  Its eventual evolution to becoming a restaurant, however, is thanks in part to Ray’s mother, who started cooking for some of the local workers in the 1940’s.  After some time, Ray took the reigns of the business and it operated as his restaurant from around 1990.  In 2020, however, Ray Hatcher decided to retire.
Even while Ray was thinking about retirement, Bill Taylor was sitting in Palm Beach, Florida, already bored with his retirement from the medical industry.  “I didn’t enjoy it,” says Bill.  “All that sitting around.”  To make matters worse, the hurricane season in Florida was getting more and more serious, year after year.  Bill didn’t want to wait around for a storm to destroy his home.
Continue reading →

LCF Group Has Been Serving Floyd County and the Surrounding Region for Over 50 Years! Chantilly Farm Under New Ownership in 2021!

Posted on by

by Vickie Holt

Originally from Oregon, David Larsen received a degree in Business and Technology in Electronics from Oregon State University.  After working for a few years in the industry as an engineer, David became a teacher in electronic instrumentation at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia – a position from which he retired after thirty-one years in 1998.  But it wasn’t all academics and electronics.  During his tenure at Virginia Tech, David also assisted the Office of International Development.  For many of those years, he worked with land and farming, starting up a Christmas tree farm and marketing organization.
With his hands in the land as early as the mid-sixties, David was able to establish the Laurel Creek Farms corporation (LCF) in 1968.  Named for the first area of land developed.
David was later joined in the business by his wife, Gaynell.  In February of 2002, they were also joined by Dee Wallace, who completed the three-person group.  Originally from Nebraska, Dee came to Virginia in 1992 for college.  Once working with LCF, she was also creator of Floyd Virginia Magazine!  Wallace tells us the original idea was to have a publication that would help promote LCF.
Continue reading →