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It\u2019s just a few miles from Virginia Tech to the closest intersection with Route 76. From the Blacksburg campus, Harding Avenue climbs up a gradual hill and then descends quickly to an intersection with distinctive Route 76 signs pointing straight ahead and to the right. Eastbound riders on the Transamerican Bicycle Route follow Route 785 through the Catawba Valley, along and over the Blue Ridge, and eventually reach Yorktown. Westbound cyclists follow Route 723 along the North Fork of the Roanoke River into Christiansburg, and then west towards the Virginia border and eventually Oregon. Just east of this intersection, and immediately before a Route 76 marker, two signs are posted on Lusters Gate Road: a yellow diamond with the distinct bicycle outline and a yellow rectangle with the text: \u201cShare the Road.\u201d For more than a decade, since this project was first conceived in anticipation of America\u2019s semiquincentennial, this message, \u201cshare the road,\u201d has served as both an aspirational statement for cyclists and methodological challenge for pursuing a unique form of public history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welcome to the introductory episode for the Bike 76 VA podcast, which westbound riders may hear before episode 1 and eastbound riders may hear after episode 30. The location for this episode is an intersection in Montgomery County, just over 350 miles from the starting point in Yorktown and 200 miles from Breaks interstate park, where westbound riders enter Kentucky. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intersection of Routes 785 and 723 is known locally as Lusters Gate. The term \u201cgate\u201d commonly refers to a barrier lowered when a toll was paid on a turnpike. The designation \u201cLusters Gate\u201d originated in a proposal for a Blacksburg, Catawba, Fincastle Turnpike in the late nineteenth century. Achilles Luster was a Blacksburg businessman for whom the toll station was named. According to available historical evidence, the proposed Blacksburg, Catawba, Fincastle Turnpike never reached full construction, but the name of the intersection has persisted for almost one hundred and fifty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intersection is also distinctive because of a sign on a brick building at the intersection: \u201cThe Old Cheese Factory circa 1930.\u201d The sign is mostly correct: a cheese factory did function in this vicinity during the 1930s. The cheese factory originated in the vision of William Dabney Saunders, an agricultural extension faculty member at Virginia Polytechnic Institute who served as Secretary of Agriculture for Virginia for three years, beginning in 1908. As early as the 1910s, Saunders began advocating for Virginia dairy farmers to form cooperatives to produce cheese from their excess milk, especially when the price of milk fell below a profitable level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Saunders, a cheese factory can be \u201coperated to advantage\u201d with just one hundred cows. A farmer who took the \u201cspecial course in cheese making\u201d at an agricultural university, such as Virginia Polytechnic, for just six weeks would have \u201cno trouble\u201d in \u201cgetting a factory started and making a good article of cheese from the beginning.\u201d So-called \u201cgood cows\u201d could produce 4000 pounds of milk each year, which would result in 400 pounds of cheese. At an estimated sale price of 25 cents per pound, a single cow could produce $100 in cheese sales each year. Beyond the immediate return, Saunders argued that \u201cintelligent dairy farming\u201d would increase the value of land due to the greater productivity of the herd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1917, Saunders met with farmers in the region to demonstrate cheese making techniques and discuss setting up a cooperative cheese factory, but it would take another decade — and the onset of the depression — to bring these efforts to fruition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a 1952 interview published in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Saunders described a meeting with Montgomery County farmers dealing with plummeting dairy prices in the first year of the Great Depression: \u201cI suggested they try to sell milk in the form of cheese and the farmers decided to give it a try.\u201d Saunders rented a building for $3 a month, acquired processing equipment, and began making cheese within a week: \u201cIt was a very crude and bold attempt, I guess, but the result was that the market price of milk in this area increased twice soon afterward.\u201d About twenty farmers agreed to work together and set up the Roanoke Valley Cheese Cooperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cheese factory in Ellett Valley was one of the first of these efforts, which then spread across the state. In the 1930s, cheese factories provided farmers with access to markets during the Great Depression which posed real challenges to the rural economy of the state. In 1933, the Lusters Gate cheese factory reportedly brought $50 a day to farmers in the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more than thirty years, the factory at Lusters Gate produced cheese from local farms. A 1947 article in the Montgomery News Messenger reported annual output of one hundred thousand pounds of cheese with milk contributed from more than eighty farms. The secretary of the cooperative offered this assessment: \u201cIt\u2019s small, but it has played a very important role in making dairying a profitable business in this section.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1952 interview cited above, Saunders offered this summary of the Luster\u2019s Gate factory: \u201cThe cheese cooperative has been going strong ever since [the 1930s]\u2026We have a factory and a business worth $50,000 and we make about 1,200 pounds a day during the Summer and 400 pounds a day during the Winter.\u201d Even at age 89, Saunders stated, \u201cI\u2019m still active as can be\u2026and I keep in pretty close touch with the cheese factory. I still can tell them a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1960s, the Roanoke Valley Cheese Cooperative managed the factory, with more than a hundred farms contributing dairy products. Cheese was sold at the factory, with customers ranging from local residents to football fans on their way to Blacksburg. Over time, however, changes in market demand, agricultural practices, and government regulations combined to erode the minimal returns available to farmers. By the time Bikecentennial riders reached Ellett Valley in 1976, the Cheese Factory had ceased operations. The brick building was subsequently converted into apartments, which are still for rent at the same location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even before the cheese factory was established almost a century ago, this intersection was connected to a longer and more complex history. The roads that now intersect at Lusters Gate were used for centuries before the Bikecentennial route was planned in the 1970s. These roads originated as foot paths used by indigenous people for hunting, trading, and migration. Walking paths generally paralleled streams along valleys and through gaps in the hills. The road to the north, through the Catawba Valley, connected to more extensive trails running along the western edge of the Blue Ridge, eventually reaching Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada. To the east, the road through Ellett Valley connected to foot trails into the Roanoke valley and south and east to coastal North Carolina. To the south, foot trails over the Allegheny Ridge led into the New River Valley and further west through the Appalachian mountains toward the Cumberland Gap. Cyclists along the Bikecentennial Route in 1976 may not have realized that they were riding a route that extended back for centuries of indigenous history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Europeans reached this part of Virginia, they followed the same paths, first by foot and on horseback, and eventually by wagon. By the eighteenth century, white settlers had claimed land and established farms along this section of Route 76. A historical map for Montgomery county lists names and the date that white men claimed ownership of parcels of land: Tobia Bright (1752), George Pearis, James Gorrell, John Robinson, and Francis Cyphers (all 1753), and John Henderson (1764). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cyclists riding Route 76 for miles in either direction from Lusters Gate intersection now can observe working farms laid out on the same lines as settlements established more than two centuries ago. Farm houses, usually located close to streams, are surrounded by barns and other out-buildings. Cultivated fields follow the contours of the land across the valley floor and up into hillsides. Cows, goats, chickens, and other livestock graze in fields and cluster around barns. Many changes have taken place in the land – the clear cutting of the forests for lumber, power lines that go through the valley and over the ridges, and new homes built on divided sections of farmland — but cyclists still ride many of the same routes used by farmers for generations to bring their produce to market, to access their fields, and to raise their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet this impression of permanence overlooks layers of history which shaped this region and every part of Virginia. One important hidden dimension is the experience of enslaved people and their legacies. Many of the earlier farmers and their descendents claimed ownership of enslaved people, who worked the land, took care of livestock, and provided domestic services that allowed the white people to establish and sustain their privileged positions. On the eve of the Civil War, more than one in five residents of Montgomery County was an enslaved person. The 1860 census recorded 8,259 white people and 2,217 enslaved people. Slavery existed in Virginia for more than two centuries, from the Jamestown colony to the Civil War, including eighty years after the American Revolution promised liberty, equality, and justice to all. Yet the story of enslaved people was almost absent from the historical documentation surrounding the Bikecentennial. This absence was particularly evident along the western sections of the route, where a predominantly white population and the absence of designated plantations reinforced a perception of white Appalachia without enslaved people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giles Henderson, grandson of John Henderson who settled in this valley before the American revolution, owned nineteen enslaved people, according to the 1860 census records. The oldest enslaved person was a 45 year old woman, and eight were children under the age of 10. The 1860 census did not list enslaved persons by name, so the only historical record indicates age and gender. Twenty years later,and almost fifteen years after the emancipation proclamation, the 1880 census listed seven Black men and women living in proximity to Giles Henderson: John Valentine, age 40, who worked as a laborer; his wife, Mary, age 28, and two children, Ollie and Taylor. The census listed three Black people who worked as servants: Lucy Callaway, age 61, Antony Scott, age 13, and William Moore, age, 16. Fifteen years after the Civil War ended, these seven men, women, and children may have been descendents of the enslaved people owned by Giles Henderson — or, in the case of John Valentine and Lucy Callaway, may have been enslaved themselves until the emancipation that followed the defeat of the confederacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Henderson cemetery, where Giles is buried along with generations before and after him, is located on Route 76 just over a mile from the intersection at Lusters Gate. The lives of enslaved people and slave owning families are thus an important element of the history to be revealed in through these podcast episodes. The fact that a home close to this intersection regularly displays a confederate flag in full view from the road is a reminder that the underlying forces that imposed slavery for two centuries and legal segregation for another century remain a presence along Route 76 in Virginia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fifty years ago, the connections between agriculture, this region of Virginia, and the Bikecentennial converged in the remarkable story of Clarence Pickard, who set out at the age of 86 with the first group of riders from Jamestown. Pickard reached Blacksburg, presumably riding through the Lusters Gate intersection, ten days later — and almost five decades after he taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute as a colleague of Saunders, who created the cheese factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clarence Pickard was born in 1890 in Cedar Point, Kansas, completed his education at Simpson College and Iowa State University, entered military service in October 1918 in the final month of the war, and began working as an agriculture extension agent in Iowa. In the 1920s, Pickard worked at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in agricultural economics, providing guidance to farmers on marketing and accounting. From the 1930s until his retirement in the 1960s, Pickard worked in Iowa as an extension agent and farmer. After his retirement, Pickard and his wife Mildred volunteered for the Peace Corps, spending two years working with farming communities in India. In 1973, Pickard acquired fame among cyclists by taking part in the inaugural bicycle ride across Iowa, at the age of 83. Pickard rode a woman\u2019s bicycle, the only size that fit him, tennis shoes, and a distinctive silver pith helmet acquired while on his Peace Corps assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given Pickard\u2019s stature in the cycling world, and the Bikecentennial goal of celebrating America by riding across the United States, it made sense that the now 86 year old was among the first group of riders to depart Jamestown on May 15, 1976. Photographs published in regional and national newspapers show Pickard among a group of much younger riders on bicycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pickard, a \u201cself-appointed biking ambassador,\u201d took advantage of the media attention to advocate for bike trails that would \u201cmake biking more enjoyable, convenient, and safer.\u201d Pickard declared that \u201cabandoned railroads could be converted into excellent biking trails,\u201d while new roads only needed a four foot strip along the sides to provide a safe space for cyclists. A feature story in the Cincinnati Inquirer about the Bikecentennial described Pickard\u2019s frequent efforts to talk with \u201cschool officials and press people\u201d about \u201cbuilding better bike paths so our young people don\u2019t have to risk their lives on the highways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 24, nine days after leaving Jamestown, Pickard returned to Blacksburg, which he described as his \u201cold stomping ground.\u201d Pickard wore thermal underwear, a corduroy shirt, a red, white, and blue Bikecentennial t-shirt, a silver pith helmet, and black tennis shoes. While in Blacksburg, Pickard lectured a physical education class about the value of regular calisthenics. In an interview with a regional newspaper, Pickard declared he was riding across the country \u201cfor the biking movement and physical fitness.\u201d He recognized that cycling brought risks, especially from \u201ca very few\u201d number of \u201cdiscourteous\u201d truckers, but he also encouraged his fellow cyclists to share the road: \u201cWe need to be tolerant of other persons, and bikers need to be alert and careful not to interfere with automobile and truck traffic to any degree because these roads were built for automobiles,\u201d as reported by the Roanoke Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pickard did not complete his ride across the country in 1976. He fell ill with bronchitis in early June, after spending a month on his bicycle. While recovering at the home of his son, a physician, in Columbia, Missouri, he finally gave up on his transcontinental bicycle ride. Six years later, in 1982, Pickard was killed by a truck while jogging on the road in front of his home in Indianola. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The connections between the Lusters Gate intersection, the cheese factory, and Clarence Pickard are illustrative of the \u201cshare the road\u201d theme that emerges across all thirty episodes of the Bike 76 VA podcast. The \u201cshare the road\u201d sign now located at this intersection probably didn\u2019t exist almost fifty years ago when the Bikecentennial route was mapped through Catawba and Ellett valleys. A history of road signs indicates that \u201cshare the road\u201d with a bicycle outline was first used in the early 1990s, more than a decade after the Bikecentennial. The official Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices from the Federal Highway Association indicates that the sign should \u201cwarn drivers to watch for other slower forms of transportation traveling along the highway, such as bicycles\u2026\u201d Share the Road signs can be found along Route 76, alerting motorists of bicycles using the shared roadway. Yet this phrase is also appropriate for the history told in these podcasts, which is a shared history of the United States, before, during, and after the revolutionary era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As indicated in this episode, Bike 76 VA explores a history of Virginia which is diverse in stories, equitable in thinking about opportunities and challenges, and inclusive of perspectives. Each episode is based on original research using source materials from the era as well as historical analysis from scholars and public historians. The work of local historians provides some of the sources and analysis, thus indicating how these episodes build on the work of community members. Yet this podcast differs from many local histories by situating individuals and families in the broader trajectories of American history over more than five hundred years. This episode, which connects a historic building to a farming community to Indigenous foot paths to a Bikecentennial rider is illustrative of how each episode makes connections between a specific location and broader historical themes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The history told in these podcast episodes is thus a shared history, a path through time that connects people to the environment, to local and regional communities, to engaging ideas and inspirational visions, to disparities in power and position, and to the present as well as the past. History is empathetic and imaginative, as we can think about what it meant to be an indigenous person walking these footpaths, a European farmer claiming the land and establishing a farm that would last through generations, an enslaved person who parents and children were by law treated as property, a farmer in the 1930s looking for better prospects, or an agricultural agent returning to a place of previous employment after a career of service. This history is grounded in evidence and documented with sources, yet it is also a narrative of lives shaped by the land, the people, and the communities across more than five hundred miles in Virginia. Cyclists who ride across Virginia on Route 76 will discover illumination, and possibly inspiration, regarding the people and communities encountered along the more than five hundred miles of this route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have been listening to the introductory episode for the Bike 76 VA podcast, which westbound riders may hear before episode 1 and eastbound riders may hear after episode 30. The location for this episode is an intersection in Montgomery County, just over 350 miles from the starting point in Yorktown and 200 miles from Breaks interstate park, where westbound riders enter Kentucky. 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 from the homepage for this podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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