Lost Communities of Virginia

by Terri Fisher, Kirsten Sparenborg, William Ferris (Foreword)

Virginia’s back roads and rural areas are dotted with traces of once-thriving communities. General stores, train depots, schools, churches, banks, and post offices provide intriguing details of a way of life now gone. The buildings may be empty or repurposed today, the existing community may be struggling to survive or rebuilding itself in a new and different way, but the story behind each community’s original development is an interesting and important footnote to the development of Virginia and the United States. Lost Communities of Virginia documents thirty small communities from throughout the Commonwealth that have lost their original industry, transportation mode, or way of life. Using contemporary photographs, historical information, maps, and excerpts of interviews with longtime residents of these communities, the book documents the present conditions, recalls past boom times, and explains the role of each community in regional settlement.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

252 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2011

Reviews

[Dan Ream · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent histories of twenty-nine small Virginia communities that have diminished to varying degrees since their hey-days. These range from nearly ghost towns to small communities that were once much larger or were expected to grow, but didn’t. The reasons these towns shrunk or died were many: some were rail towns created as water and fuel stops for steam trains that were no longer needed when trains switched to diesel. Others were lumber or coal towns where supply or demand ran out. Or there’s Pamplin, home of world famous clay smoking pipes, demand for which died in the 1950s with the increased popularity of smoking cigarettes over pipes. Or Sharps, where steamboats connected the isolated Northern Neck to Baltimore and the rest of the outside world- until bridges and improved roads were built, and several hurricanes wiped out the docks. All in all, an excellent book about some of Virginia’s small struggling communities.

[Nan Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book will delight any Virginian eager for a close look at a segment of the state’s history not to be found in textbooks. The stories of such “lost” communities sometimes appear in local Sunday newspapers, usually in the Lifestyles section or something similar, and are written by journalists who enjoy digging into the past. It’s nice to see a small sampling consolidated into one volume.
The parts of the book that I enjoyed most are also those that I have minor complaints about. The photographs illustrate that one picture is indeed worth a thousand words, but most of them would have been more effective in color, not black and white. Also, some of the quotes were from days gone by, and they should have been accompanied by dates. And finally, the size of the book makes it an attractive addition to the coffee table, but it is so big that it is physically cumbersome to handle. The layout is such that a smaller format could have easily accommodated the photos and text; the book simply would have been twice as thick.
All in all, though, this is a great book to give to Grandma for Christmas, but only if you think she can handle the bulk.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially liked the profiles of small communities in Southwest Virginia like Mendota. I enjoyed learning how each town come about depending on transportation, geography, and resources. The declining population in each place is heartbreaking but also tells the boom and bust story of many post-industrial towns and towns that were just lodging points midway between two larger cities.

It's also interesting to see that even though many of these communities were rural and isolated they were compact and urban in their layout. That hints at how new walkable mixed-use neighborhoods could function. Further proving it's not a foreign concept in the US because we have all these great examples from the past.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found 'Lost Communities of Virginia' while browsing in a bookstore. Some of the place names in the book were familiar and the premise of the book caught my attention. I received the book as a birthday gift 5 years ago and shortly thereafter my husband and I visited one of the towns in the book near where we live. Visiting the other 29 communities in the book went on my bucket list. Four years later almost to the day, my husband and I visited the last two communities in the book. It was an adventure we will always remember. The communities were as close as 20 miles and as far away as 300 miles. At least one of the communities was so well hidden we almost didn't find it but we enjoyed every minute of our mission. I would read the section on a particular community aloud as we traveled to it. Each community included a map and we enjoyed acclimating ourselves to the little towns. There were usually 8 to 10 pictures of each community so I enjoyed recreating those pictures with my own camera. Some of the communities we found looking more prosperous, some of the communities looked more neglected than in the book and it was not totally unusual to find some of the buildings in communities totally gone. Approximately 20 years had elapsed since the project began and over ten years since the book was published so that's not surprising. The book was an outreach project of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Tech. Twenty six hundred communities were initially visited which was narrowed down to a bit over 500, then down to 130 and finally the 30 communities presented in the book. These communities were grouped according to community type (gathering place, farming community, cultural enclave, resort community, transportation hubs, resource extraction towns and company towns) and inclusion required that there be evidence of their past, evidence of their decline and access to stories and histories about the community. I would give this book five stars as I enjoyed reading it, visiting the towns and recently going back and rereading the Foreword and Epilogue. I keep searching bookstores and the internet for another similar book. I really loved this one!

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was extremely excited when I discovered this book. I was equally disappointed in this book once I started it. The title is extremely inaccurate. There are a lot of lost communities in Virginia and and for the most part while these communities are small and may have lost their main industry, they themselves still exist. I was not familiar with all of the communities, but the ones that I had been in and know people that live there I found to be a bit inaccurate and misleading. For instance, I have a friend that lives in a gorgeous 200+ years house in one of the communities. It is the most striking thing in town. Instead of finding that house. They had pictures of decaying buildings. They seemed to love black and white pictures of peeling paint on ramshackle buildings. I think the authors were extremely reckless in condemning these extremely small communities. They seemed to delight in people that were not really a true representation of the area as well. I asked one friend about one of the main people mentioned in one of the communities. She started laughing and said I have lived here my entire life and know most everyone in town for many years. I barely know that person and trust me she was never important to this community, yet the authors acted as if the town ended with her . As I said, these communities are not lost and any chances they may have had to move forward has probably been destroyed by two women that do not seem to understand anything about these communities. I rated it a 1 star and if I could rate it lower, I would.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirsten Sparenborg's photos and research are so thorough and well-organized, and beautifully juxtaposed with interviews and memories of town residents. The book groups the towns by whether they grew around farming, mining, a factory, etc. It's interesting and sad to see how they thrived for an (often economic) reason, and also declined when that time had passed. The knowledge gathered here becomes more precious each year as some of the voices captured and buildings photographed pass on. Sparenborg's love for this state shine through as she captures the warm communal feeling of shared Sunday dinners and gatherings at general stores. A beautiful time capsule of a time and place that won't be with us forever.

[Lucy Peaden · Rating 5 out of 5]

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