Places on the National Historic Register

Botetourt County is full of history and historic places. At one time the county stretched to the Mississippi River and up into Wisconsin. It's not so large today but we have many historical structures on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here are 13 of them.

The Phoenix Bridge

1. The Phoenix Bridge. This is a truss bridge near Eagle Rock.

2. Greenfield. Currently (2015) a major source of controversy in the county as the property was purchase by government officials 20 years ago. They want to move the historic structures to build a shell building in hopes that some big company will come in.



Botetourt Courthouse Steeple

3. Fincastle Historic District. The entire town of Fincastle is mostly a historic district. The town was established as the county seat in 1770. Fires took out a few blocks but many old buildings still exist in the town, including a number of historic churches.



4. Breckinridge Mill. An historic grist mill that no longer works. It has been turned into apartment complexes but the structure is still intact.

5. Bessemer. This is an archeological site of prehistoric Native Americans. The site was first discovered during road construction.

6. Buchanan Historic District. While not quite as old of an incorporated town as Fincastle, Buchanan has been around a long time. It was originally known as Pattonsburg and because of its location along the James River was an active port town. It was also a site of Civil War activity.

7. Lauderdale is a huge home located outside of Buchanan. It has been undergoing restoration for a number of years.

8. Santillane is a historic home located just outside of Fincastle. It was constructed around 1835. The family who originally owned it was the Hancocks, and daughter Julia married William Clark (of Lewis & Clark fame).


Santillane


9. Wheatland Manor. This historic home is located between Fincastle and Buchanan.

10. Wiloma. Another historic home located near Fincastle, constructed in 1848.

11. Nininger's Mill. This is also known as Tinker Mill. The grist mill was originally constructed about 1847.

12. Greyledge. Located near Buchanan, the original structure was built around 1842.

13. Bryan McDonald House. This is one of the older homes in the Troutville area. It was built in 1766.

You can find more listed at this Wiki article.

Buchanan's Swinging Bridge

The pictures below are of the swinging bridge in Buchanan. The bridge is used for foot traffic and crosses the James River.

It has an interesting history.

This is the only such structure to cross the James River.  The bridge was initially constructed as a toll bridge by the Buchanan Turnpike Company. The toll was a nickel per person, wagon, or animal.


The bridge is 366 feet long. Some parts of the bridge, most notably the rock piers, date back to 1851, and Civil War troops used it to cross the river.





The bridge, then a covered bridge, was burned in 1864 by General John McCausland in an effort to keep  Union troops from using the bridge to cross into Buchanan to burn parts of it during Hunter's Raid.




After the Civil War, the bridge was rebuilt, but a flood washed it away in 1877. The bridge subsequently has been replaced several times, finally becoming a pedestrian bridge in 1938.

The bridge is featured on the Town of Buchanan's official seal.

Buchanan

As of the 2000 U.S. Census, Buchanan was Botetourt County’s largest town with 1,233 people.

Buchanan offers garbage collection to its citizens along with additional police protection, paid mostly by a state grant.

The town has an annual budget of about $750,000, the most of any of the three towns. That includes its water system fund and a real estate and personal property tax. Neither Troutville nor Fincastle charge real estate and personal property taxes.

While Buchanan has the largest budget of any county town, its citizens have the smallest per capita income at $16,238. There are 579 total housing units in the town, and 61.7 percent of the folks are in the labor force. Most have to travel 26 minutes to get to their jobs.

The town was nearly devastated by the 1985 flood. Revitalization efforts begun in the early 1990s have turned the town into a true Main Street area.

The town in its early days was a major James River crossing.

Downtown Buchanan contains the county’s highest concentration of historic homes, stores and churches and makes up the county’s largest National Register Historic District.

The town was established in 1811-12 and in 1881-1882 Buchanan incorporated, bringing the nearby community of Pattonsburg, on the north side of the James River, into its boundaries. Buchanan adjusted its boundaries in the early 1990s in order to take in more people.

Hunter's Raid in Buchanan

The Town of Buchanan in Botetourt has three markers commemorating the 1864 Virginia Raid of Union General David Hunter.

Hunter's Raid began on June 5, 1864, with the Battle of Piedmont. He proceeded to Staunton, burning government buildings and supplies as he went.

Hunter's orders indicate he sent troops ahead of him into the town. His soldiers captured prisoners and canal barges loaded with supplies. However, a bridge across the James River was ruined in the process. Eleven dwellings also were burned.

Approximately 30,000 Union soldiers camped around the area. Mount Joy, one of the larger plantation homes, also burned.

Hunter took his men away from Buchanan via the Peaks of Otter, to Bedford. The raid ended at the Battle of Lynchburg on June 17-18, 1864 where Confederate General Jubal Early defeated the Union forces.

Following the Union defeat, Confederates forces pursued Union forces back through Bedford, then to Salem where they fought again at the Battle of Hanging Rock.