Crosstie Lane in Parrott

[NW Mailing List]

On 6/10/08, Vince wrote:

>

> Bruce,

>

> Thanks for putting the web page together so others won't have to try to

> reconstruct all this research bit by bit. Looks good to me, except for where

> it says "...drops to the river at Belspring...". That's actually in Parrott,

> a mile or more north of Belspring. As soon as you cross Back Creek you're in

> Parrott.

>


Thanks, it has been fun pulling together bits and pieces of things I knew
about or speculated about over the years.  As to "Belspring" vs. "Parrott"
I'm
going with N&W convention as to how it
referenced things.  I will clarify the actual with the PR next time I'm
poking around the site.

One thing I'd love to see would be an overlay of the "high-grade" ROW on a

> current GIS photo. That old Radford map showed the track from Radford going

> east on Hazel Hollow, then bearing to the north, but making more than a 90

> degree turn. Almost as if the ROW would have come all the way back around on

> top of where Rt. 11 is today. But I don't think it did.

>

> As Charlie(?) said, there was always an obvious "shelf" left from the ROW

> behind some of the businesses on the east side of Rt. 11 there. And the

> railroad wouldn't have put an extra "crook" in line. Maybe the mapmaker just

> got "artistic" where he ended the high-grade line?

>


I'm not sure about getting from Hazel Hollow Road to Belspring with an
overlay, since that area has changed considerably, both over the years and
quite
recently.  Until the new Radford bridge was built and U.S. 11 reconfigured
there for the wider twin bridges, the bench right there was quite evident if
you
knew what you were looking for and what you were looking at. I think it was
a Taco Bell just across from Hazel Hollow and the shelf ran behind it. Based
on the location and curvature, the line was climbing there, after crossing
the original relocated Lee Highway at almost a right angle*. Without a track
chart or some other documentation, it is difficult to tell how much
curvature was between there and the flower shop on up the road. Between the
widening
of the road and the construction of the businesses along there, little clues
remain.

*I have a negative that I'm trying to scan if I can get the ferschluging
scanner to cooperate. It is one of a handful of 4x5 negatives that I ran
across
when I worked for the Radford News Journal in the late '70s. This has a copy
of a photo of the rail bridges from the New River Depot side of the river
and another photo showing the "Opening of the Wagon Bridge 1891." Based on
the map that someone posted earlier that showed a river crossing
upriver from the rail bridge (ferry to New River Depot?), plus Dudley's
Ferry Road in Fairlawn, there weren't many options to cross the river.
According to the
caption, "The wagon bridge, formally opened to traffic on Sept. 7, 1891, was
so called because it filled a long felt need for wagon traffic to and from
Pulaski
County." If one looks behind the Family Dollar (or whatever store is there
at the Radford end of the bridge these days), there is a large power line
strung
across the river. The three poles there on the Radford side are sunk into
the original abutment for this bridge, according to the contractor putting
in the
line (again, from my days as a reporter). The "new" Memorial Bridge was
moved slightly downriver when it was built, in the '40s I believe.

Bruce in Blacksburg
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