Blue Ridge Tales | Explore Stories of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Loyalists, Lead Mines, and Lynch Law

by Wayne Jordan
in Blue Ridge Life
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Reading Time: 5 minutesIn the mountains of Virginia during the Revolution, justice didn’t always wait for courtrooms. Sometimes, it showed up with a rope and a warning. That’s how the phrase “lynch law” got started—right here in western Virginia. The lead mines near what’s now Wytheville were essential to the Patriot war effort. They produced the bullets. No lead, no firepower. That made […]

John Wyatt: The Botetourt Barrel-Maker Spy

by Wayne Jordan
in Blue Ridge Life

Reading Time: 4 minutesThe British called it a gentleman’s war. That might’ve been true in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia or London. But out here—in the rolling hills of Botetourt (pronounced “baa-tuh-taat”) County, Virginia—it was anything but. That’s where you’d find John Wyatt, bending over hoop iron with his cooper’s hammer, trying to feed his family while the colonies caught fire. He wasn’t […]

Roanoke, VA: The Town That Skipped a Century

by Wayne Jordan
in Blue Ridge Life

Reading Time: 4 minutesA Valley with a Funny Name While America was toasting its new transcontinental railroad in Utah on May 10, 1869, Roanoke, VA, was just a mountain crossroads called Big Lick. Named for the large natural salt deposit, this lick attracted wildlife in droves: buffalo, deer, and elk, which came to lick the mineral-rich soil. The “big” in Big Lick distinguished […]

From Thread to Trail: The Rebirth of Fries, Virginia

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 4 minutesIt’s a quiet morning in Fries, Virginia, and the New River is doing what it’s always done—slipping past the banks with ageless calm. The cotton mill that gave the town its name and purpose is long gone, but you’d swear you can still hear the echoes. Not of the looms—they stopped decades ago—but of something softer: hikers crunching gravel on […]

The Lost History of Freemen in Appalachia

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen most people think of African Americans in the 19th century, two images dominate: Southern slaves or Northern abolitionists. But tucked deep in the hills and hollows of the mountain South, there lived thousands of men and women who didn’t fit either category. They were Freemen in Appalachia—Black Americans who were not enslaved yet not fully free—and their stories have […]

The Price of a View: Human Cost of the Blue Ridge Parkway

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 5 minutesWe all say the same thing the first time we see the Blue Ridge Parkway: “The view is incredible.” The Blue Ridge Parkway, with its winding curves and postcard overlooks, offers some of the most stunning scenery in the eastern U.S. It’s the kind of road that makes you slow down, roll down the windows, and breathe a little deeper. […]

They Never Left: Cherokee in Appalachia

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 5 minutesWe’re taught the Trail of Tears as an ending—a final march west, away from ancestral homelands. But what if it wasn’t the end? What if some never left? In 1838, under orders from the federal government, thousands of Cherokee men, women, and children were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to march nearly 1,000 miles to Indian Territory. Thousands died […]

Paper, Power, and Race in Old Jim Crow Virginia

by Wayne Jordan
in Blue Ridge Life

Reading Time: 5 minutesIn Jim Crow Virginia, the power of a single piece of paper could decide your future—or erase your past. In 1924, the Commonwwealth of Virginia passed a law that tried to nail down something as messy and human as race using bureaucratic language and the force of law. One drop of the wrong blood, and you weren’t white anymore. Just […]

The Crooked Road Sings: Stories from the Blue Ridge

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 5 minutesThe Crooked Road isn’t just a mountain ramble. It’s a sound—a fiddle tune rolling through the hills, a banjo ringing against the Blue Ridge backdrop. It’s the laughter of dancers at a Friday night jamboree, the reverent silence after a ballad, the echo of generations who’ve carried these songs across porches, church pews, and festival stages. Music isn’t just played […]

A Letter from Mother Jones to the Miners of Cabin Creek

by Wayne Jordan
in Blog

Reading Time: 6 minutesEditor’s Note: The following is a fictionalized letter inspired by Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones) real-life words and activism. While this letter is imagined, the events it describes—the brutality of the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike, the suffering of the miners, and the role of labor in America—are deeply rooted in history. An opposing perspective and commentary follow the […]