Like others who travel Virginia’s highways and byways on business, I often wonder what great little stories lay just off the four lane. What’s there waiting for me to explore?
Deadlines often dictate that I pass by inviting hamlets and back roads, but I always wonder what I’ve missed – until now.
Thanks to “Beaches to Bluegrass: Places to Brake on Virginia’s Longest Road,” U.S. 58, at least, holds fewer mysteries.
Joe Tennis (a regular contributor to Blue Ridge Country) has tied up an inviting package of Virginia history, legend, celebrity sightings and natural (and a few supernatural) wonders in the ribbon of road that’s wound its way through his life. A Bristol, Va., journalist, he was born on the eastern end of U.S. 58 in Virginia Beach.
Tennis took his notebook offroad to capture the stories about the Suffolk teenage artist who in 1916 won $5 for creating Mr. Peanut, about the lighthouse at the head of the Dan River 300 miles from the sea, about Galax, the capital of the Crooked Road and old-time mountain music, about Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to Whitetop Mountain to greet 20,000 fans, about the Water Works War in Bristol, about fairy stones, kissing bridges and Major General J.E.B. Stuart.
Tourist information at the end of each chapter is a nice bonus – just in case Tennis tempts you, like me, to brake and enjoy life along the longest road in Virginia.
“Beach to Bluegrass: Places to Brake on Virginia’s Longest Road,” Joe Tennis. 200 pages, $17.95 softcover, The Overmountain Press. 800-992-2691, overmountainpress.com.
Joe Tennis is also author of:
Southwest Virginia Crossroads: An Almanac of Place Names and Places to See
