REGIONAL VIEW | SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA
Damascus sees hike in trail tourism by Beth JoJack
O
n a September afternoon, Stuart Wright was trying to persuade a tourist to bring her son back to visit the town of Damascus in Washington County.
“Bring that little boy down here and he can play in the river, he can hike, he can bike the trail,” Wright coaxed. “Bring him where he’s got something to do.” Wright, who owns a number of vacation
cabins in the area, along with a lodge, an inn and an RV park, serves as the unofficial cheerleader for tourism in Damascus, his hometown.
Back in the 1970s when Washington County leaders first started talking about converting an abandoned 35-mile Norfolk and Western Railway corridor into the Virginia Creeper Trail, a hiking and biking destination running from Abingdon through Damascus to the Virginia-North Carolina line, Wright wasn’t on board. “I fought to keep the train here,” he recalls. “I thought we needed the train but, boy, I was wrong.” Even amid a pandemic, Wright says, tour-
ism thrives in Damascus, a town once known for its now-departed timber and furniture industries. As proof, he points to Brinkwaters, the downtown boutique hotel that began welcoming guests in August. It sits near the Appalachian Heritage Distillery, which will open a tasting room and store in October not
FOR THE RECORD
Gov. Ralph Northam, first lady Pamela Northam, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and other government officials attended a three-day annual conference for Appa- lachian leaders beginning Oct. 6. The 2021 Appalachian Regional Commission conference was held in St. Paul, a town on the Wise-Russell county line, and received about 800 online and 100 in-person regis- trations. The commission’s representatives talked about the challenges facing their states’ Appalachian communities — high poverty rates, lagging infrastructure, lack of access to early childhood education and high-speed broadband struggles — and touted strides they’d made in those areas. Northam and Hogan visited sites in St. Paul and rode ATVs on trails. (Cardinal Press)
Ballad Health Chief Operating Officer Eric Deaton announced on Sept. 29 that the system would resume some elective surgeries that have been on hold since late August, as the number of new cases
16 | JUNE 2019
Damascus business owner Stuart Wright credits tourism for his hometown’s resurgence.
far from the new Appalachian Trail Center scheduled to open during Damascus’ Trail Days celebration in May 2022.
“Damascus is the poster child for what tourism can do for a community,” Wright says. Trey Waters had listened to his buddy
Wright kvetch so much about having to turn away potential guests because his properties were always booked that Waters, a pharmacist and real estate developer, decided to transform a downtown building he owned into the Brinkwaters hotel, which he says is more accurately described as “a big box of Airbnbs.”
in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee dropped by about 40% over the two weeks preceding the announcement. The hospital system was treating 324 COVID-19 patients at the time, down from 413 a few weeks prior. The testing positivity rate in the region, however, has remained around 21%, and the vaccination rate is trailing the two statewide averages. (WVTF)
Connecticut-based Blue Star NBR LLC and Delaware-based American Glove Innovations Inc. will invest $714 million to build a manufacturing facility in Wythe County for producing nitrile medical gloves — a joint venture expected to create 2,500 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Oct. 4. The operation is expected to produce up to 60 billion medical gloves each year from nitrile butadiene rubber — an oil-resistant, synthetic rubber — at the manufactur- ing plant in Progress Park, the county’s industrial park. It is anticipated to occupy more than 200 acres and will have the
NOVEMBER 2021 Waters, who splits his time between
Montana, North Carolina and Damascus, partnered on the project with his friends Eric and Emily Brinker, who own a Raleigh- based construction company. Brinkwaters is a combination of the partners’ last names. In addition to sleek modern furnishings, some of the hotel’s 13 suites include full kitchens and sleeping lofts. A bike rack sits in front of the building for guests who come to pedal the Virginia Creeper Trail. Word about the hotel seems to be
out. “We’ve been at capacity for the last several weekends,” Waters says. “That’s tremendous.” ■
potential to triple in size in future phases. (
VirginiaBusiness.com)
Facebook Inc., Appalachian Power and GigaBeam Networks are partnering to bring faster internet to Grayson County residents, the social media giant announced Sept. 23. The trio of companies will bring fiber-to-the-home and wireless internet to about 6,000 households in the county. Facebook is building long-haul fiber routes, which will connect Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina data centers. Facebook’s network will connect with Appalachian Power’s middle-mile fiber network along its electric infrastructure grid, which GigaBeam Networks built on, extending broadband access to residences. (
VirginiaBusiness.com)
Norton-based firm SolarBiotech and Mountain Empire Community College announced a partnership on Sept. 29 to help prepare residents for expected new jobs. The company, which is currently focused on using cellular agriculture to
create food ingredients, relocated from North Carolina in March 2020 and employs 35 people. It expects to grow to more than 100 employees next year and to add a 200,000-square-foot facility to its operations by the end of 2023. The college will work with SolarBiotech to create a six- month bioprocessing operator certificate program for high school graduates. (The Coalfield Progress)
On Sept. 20, Salt Lake City-based Traeger Pellet Grill and Musser Biomass and Wood Products held a ribbon cutting at Musser Lumber Co. in the town of Rural Retreat to celebrate their partnership, which will create jobs in Wythe County while fueling barbecues across the country. Musser Biomass and Wood Products is a division of Musser Lumber Co. Inc. focused on the pellet and composite decking markets. The facility created approximately 25 jobs with its grand opening. The plant has a new form of wood dryer that can evaporate more than 2,000 gallons of water per hour from the green wood. (SWVAToday)
Photo courtesy The Cavalier Daily Photo by Earl Neikirk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80