Located just north of the city of Roanoke, Troutville is situated at the intersection of four major transportation routes: Interstate 81, which connects the southeastern United States to update New York; Highway 11, which follows old Native American walking paths and the route taken by European settlers moving through the valleys to settle in western Virginia as well as North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky; the Appalachian Trail, which connects Georgia to Maine along nearly two thousand miles of dedicated walking paths; and the Transamerican Bicycle Route, in a section between the Blue Ridge to the east and the hills of Southwest Virginia to the west. Troutville thus connects four different forms of transportation: the high speed travel of the interstates, the slightly slower route of a historical highway, the slowest means of walking by foot, and the opportunities and challenges of long distance cycling. Troutville is also distinctive in terms of cycling history because it is one of the few places where Route 76 passes through a suburb, whereas most of the route is along country roads. While Troutville is somewhat unusual in terms of the 500 plus miles of cycling in Virginia, it is very representative of major shifts in American society in the last century, including the fifty years since the Transamerican Route began in 1976. Exploring the growth and impact of suburbs, and particularly the relationship between cycling and suburbs, provides new insights into American history along route 76.
Welcome to episode 19 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Troutville, located just under 320 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 230 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
The growth of the suburbs is one of the most important social changes in the United States since the end of World War II. The expansion of populations outside major cities resulted from the convergence of many factors, including the consolidation and mechanization of farming that reduced rural populations, transportation developments associated with the automobile, the expansion of highways connecting urban centers to regional locations, the demand for housing as a result of the postwar baby boom, the desire for larger homes and more space than was possible in cities, federal policies that prioritized home ownership, restrictive covenants that sustained discriminatory practices, and planned communities that promised the best of both small towns and urban living.
By the 1970s, when the Bikecentennial began, suburbs had become a dominant pattern in American life. Fifty years later, this trajectory has continued, fueling the rise of so-called “exurbs,” referring to population growth increasingly removed from the city centers which originally gave rise to suburbs. Even with some efforts to revise urban living, recent estimates indicate that just over one-half of Americans describe where they live as “suburban,” with just over one-quarter living in an urban environment and just under one-quarter living in a rural community.
The Roanoke region, which includes the town of Troutville, confirms this trajectory through population growth statistics. In 1920, the city of Roanoke included 50,000 people, making it the largest city west of Richmond. By 1970, the population had almost doubled, to just over 90,000 people. In the fifty years since 1970, however, the population increased by only 10%, to just over 100,000 people. Roanoke County, which surrounds the city, followed a different trajectory. From 1920 to 1970, the population tripled, to nearly 70,000, and then increased by a third, to almost 100,000 by 2020. Whereas in 1920, twice as many people lived in Roanoke City compared to Roanoke County, a century later the totals are almost the same, thus illustrating the growth of suburbs relative to cities in twentieth century America.
Botetourt County, to the north of Roanoke County, where Troutville is located, illustrates an even more important growth pattern. The population from 1920 to 1970 grew very slowly, remaining at just 18,000 people, but by 2020, the population had almost doubled, to over 33,000, thus illustrating the rapid growth of this so-called “exurb” north of Roanoke. Even though Troutville itself is a town with just 500 people, it’s history is inseparable from the overall development of the entire region around Roanoke.
The relationship between cycling and the suburbs is an important part of the history of twentieth and now twenty-first century America. Cycling in the late nineteenth century began as an urban phenomenon, as middle and upper class populations, both men and women, looked to bicycles as a means to escape crowded urban spaces for the freedom of traveling the open roads. By the 1920s, however, the automobile had gradually displaced the bicycle as a means to leave the city and explore rural communities. Urban cycling became an increasingly dangerous activity, as the potential for collisions with streetcars and horses in the late nineteenth century evolved into far more dangerous encounters with cars, trucks, and buses. The expansion of high volume traffic in cities, including interstates built through downtown neighborhoods often populated by African American communities which were displaced in the name of urban renewal, made urban cycling more difficult, as these roads were inaccessible to cyclists. Bicycles remained a means of transportation in small towns, but here again the growth in automobile use displaced cycling for all but the youngest riders, who still used their bicycles to get to school or other local activities. Outside of town limits, however, cycling remained impractical in rural regions, particularly as the volume of motor vehicle traffic on increasingly improved country roads raised the potential danger for cyclists along these routes.
The suburbs would appear to offer the best of both worlds, with opportunities to cycle locally while avoiding the dangers of urban traffic and the limits of rural roads. Planned developments in many suburbs contributed to this opportunity, as the clustering of homes around shops, parks, and pools made cycling more practical. For generations of suburban children, riding bicycles was part of the experience, particularly as changes in technology as well as fashion created the kinds of bicycles that children wanted to ride. Yet for adults, suburban living was increasingly a car culture, as the distances needed to travel even within planned communities as well as the desire to travel to urban centers for work, shopping, or leisure was possible only with a car. The pattern of suburban development actually worked against increased use of bicycles, as roadways were built to facilitate movement in and out of cities or travel within communities — but not between communities located in the same suburbs. Getting to a friend’s house in a nearby community, to a high school serving multiple developments, or to shops often meant crossing major roadways which often lacked sidewalks and certainly not bike lanes. In this way, the growth of suburbs actually worked against the further growth of cycling in postwar America.
My history with cycling parallels this trajectory, and informs this history of suburbs along Virginia’s Bicycle Route 76. I lived overseas until I was about ten, due to my father’s work in the diplomatic service. I learned to ride a bicycle in Europe in the early 1970s. When I was eight, we moved to a small European capital city. I rode a red three speed bicycle with a light that was charged by friction with the front wheel. As I remember, we used our bicycles to travel around the city, going to shops, to swim in the summer, and to see friends. In the fall of 1974, as a result of the oil shock associated with the oil embargo, a “no driving Sunday” policy to save gasoline allowed use of bicycles on highways for just one day a week. The experience of riding a bicycle with a crowd of cyclists on a highway near a city was an experience I still remember — and sometimes think about while driving, as I imagine how nice it would be to ride a bicycle along a major highway with complete safety from cars, trucks, and buses.
In 1975, we returned to the United States, which is when I began my history with suburban bicycling. The red bicycle remained a primary means of transportation in our community in a Northern Virginia suburb outside Washington DC. I rode to see friends, to the local library (at the bottom of a long hill back to our house), to the swimming pool, and to shops to buy model supplies. I didn’t ride to school, because my elementary and intermediate schools were some distance away, but in ninth and tenth grade I regularly rode my bicycle to high school, thus avoiding the unpleasant bus ride, which I dreaded for social rather than comfort reasons. I had a clip on the front of my bicycle to carry a tennis racquet, and a can of tennis balls fit perfectly in the cage for a water bottle, so that was my primary means of transportation once I began meeting friends at local tennis courts. At some point, I upgraded to a ten speed with drop handlebars, which made it easier to get around a hilly suburb.
My parents allowed me to cycle around this community with seemingly little concern for my safety (at least, as far as I was aware). None of my usual trips involved crossing under or over highways, but there were many intersections with multiple lanes of traffic which I learned to navigate at stop lights or crosswalks. Of course, travel into Washington DC required a car as did trips to more distant parts of the suburbs, including the shopping centers which were growing alongside the major highways. At that time, Washington had just begun adding dedicated bicycle routes, including the paved trail along the Potomac River to Mount Vernon and the gravel path alongside the C&O Canal, and we occasionally took family trips with bicycles to these paths.
Like most of teenages in my generation of suburban Americans, I learned to drive in high school “driver’s ed” and then got my driver’s license as soon as I turned sixteen. Just one week after getting my license, however, my family moved overseas again, to a European country where the driving age was eighteen — and so it was back on the bicycle as a primary means of transportation. We lived in a small European capital city with a Mediterranean climate, so it was ideal for cycling all year, except perhaps in the summer when temperatures regularly exceeded one hundred degrees. I rode my bicycle to school, to play tennis, and to go to the pool. Riding a bicycle as a teenager allowed a sense of freedom and autonomy that was highly valued and essential to both physical and mental health.
For the last forty years, I’ve lived in college towns, which are often well suited to cycling, because of the small size, the distance from major highways, and a community open to alternative forms of transportation. For the last two decades, I regularly ride to work, which is (fortunately) only a couple of miles each way. I’ve had to adjust this practice depending on family needs, but the climate in our region allows for cycling throughout the year, with accommodations needed for certain kinds of weather. I see cycling as an appropriate, although quite limited, response to the climate crisis, as every trip by bicycle decreases the use of fossil fuels. More importantly, daily cycling is good for me mentally as well as physically. I am lucky enough to live in a place where the cycling trip is short, traffic is light, and much of it can be done on a rails-to-trails bikeway, thus enhancing the safety of the trip.
This fifty years of experience with cycling has informed the development of this project and particularly this episode on suburbs in American life. In the last two decades, urban cycling has experienced a growth in popularity, due to a convergence of automobile congestion that slows travel times, expansion of bike lanes and trails to encourage commuting as well as recreational cycling, and an awareness of the urgent need to shift to alternative forms of transportation. Cycling in the suburbs has also seen an increase, as more developments now include walking or cycling paths and the expansion of bike routes radiating from urban centers creates more opportunities for suburban cyclists for commuting or recreational purposes. Yet cycling in the suburbs still faces persistent challenges, including the fact that most transportation is still structured around the needs of car drivers, which means that highways are not accessible and increasing traffic on regional roads make cycling seem unwelcome and unsafe. In addition, changes in the attitudes of many parents make them less willing than suburban parents fifty years ago to give their children and teenages the latitude to cycle freely within and beyond their development.
And, as is well known and hotly debated, the habits and preferences of many American children have shifted, as recreational and sporting activities are increasingly organized and structured, requiring more complicated transportation arrangements across longer distances, and entertainment is available on screens, thus eliminating in many cases the need to make even short trips to theaters or other locations. Even as the movement to establish Safe Routes to Schools presses local transportation authorities to ensure that children and teenages can travel safely to their schools, the increasing number of children driven to school by parents or by themselves in high school indicates that the long term trend away from cycling as an autonomous means of transportation has continued.
The Transamerican Bicycle Route in Virginia offers an interesting perspective on this historical relationship between cycling and the American suburbs. Troutville is one of the few places where the 550 miles of the route pass through any kind of suburb in Virginia. The most similar location is around Richmond, where Route 76 covers thirty or so miles from the southern suburbs around to the east and north. Most of this section is through Henrico County, where the population more than doubled from 150,000 in 1970 to over 330,000 in 2020. The fifty miles between Yorktown and Williamsburg is an example of increasing population density not connected to a single major urban center. In the last few decades, both of these regions have seen expansion in cycling networks, including rails-to-trails routes, dedicated greenways, and designated lanes on roads, all designed to encourage recreational cycling as well as alternative modes of transportation. Most of Route 76, however, is along rural roads that have seen relatively little change in the distribution of populations, services, and facilities. Troutville is thus unusual, in terms of the communities encountered by cyclists along the Transamerican Bicycle Route, but the growth of this suburban population over the past fifty years is highly representative of the nation’s history since the Bikecentennial in the 1970s.
You have been listening to episode 19 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the town of Troutville, located just under 320 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and about 230 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible for the homepage for this podcast.
