Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 31, 1992 TAG: 9201310266
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By JOE TENNIS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
FOR WANT OF A ROAD
Roberta Vaught was not impressed when her husband, Richard, took her to see a house he wanted to buy near Shawsville in 1979.The house was fine. And the apple tree in bloom on the sprawling 5 1/2 acres was impressive.
What Roberta didn't like was where it was, off Virginia 638. The state route, called Georges Run Road, is a one-lane dirt trail snaking down a slippery-when-dry hill from Mount Pleasant Road and continuing for 3 1/2 miles around blind curves, overhanging trees and wide ditches. Georges Run ends at Alleghany Spring Road.
Driving on it is like jumping into a real-life "Road Runner" cartoon as Wile E. Coyote, not knowing what's coming around the next bend.
What's more, if something is coming - well, you'd better pray hard. There are no guard rails to stop a fall down a hill.
Richard Vaught, a retired contracting estimator, didn't let the road conditions discourage him. "I figured, `This is modern times. Someday they have to fix this road,' " he said.
With that in mind, the Vaughts bought the house as a retirement place and returned to work in Orlando, Fla.
They moved into their Georges Run Road house in 1984. Finding the road in the same sad shape started them on a crusade.
Within a year, Richard Vaught, 63, had produced a petition with 131 signatures asking the Montgomery County government for road improvements. On a regular basis, he let his loud and booming voice be heard at public hearings of the Board of Supervisors when the Virginia Department of Transportation announced six-year plans for road improvements.
Vaught also snapped shots of every car wreck he found on the road. He gave the photos to the supervisors and asked them to take a drive to see the road's conditions first-hand.
Some improvements have been made. A couple times a year, the highway department scrapes the road and puts gravel on it. Some roadside trees have been removed.
Still, driving it is dangerous - especially when the gravel washes away and trees are in full foliage.
"It's really discouraging when you're paying taxes year after year and they're not paying attention," Vaught said. The Vaughts' neighbor, Aloma Meador, added: "If we were prominent people or people with a lot of money, this road would already be improved."
Residents in the two dozen houses along Georges Run do without services most people take for granted.
Neither The News Messenger nor the Roanoke Times & World-News makes newspaper deliveries. There are no school buses, no garbage collections and no cable TV. Sometimes, when it snows, the mail can't get through.
Jason Meador, a seventh-grader at Shawsville Middle School, walks 1 1/2 miles from his school bus stop on Mount Pleasant Road.
For Willie Wickham, a maintenance contractor, not having school bus service on Georges Run Road is costing about $40 a week in baby-sitting fees because his kids, 9 and 11, can't make it home after class.
County schools bear an expense too. Because it's officially a state-maintained road, two families with school-age children are paid about 24 cents a mile for their children's transportation to school or the bus stop, said Larry Schoff, director of facilities, maintenance and transportation.
The mileage payment is cheaper than sending a bus up the road and then having to deal with the problems that likely would occur, he said. George's Run is the only state road where parents still receive such a payment.
A total reconstruction of the road, including asphalt covering, straightened curves and wider roadbed, would cost $1.1 million, said Virginia Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Dan Brugh. Construction, according to the department's six-year plan for road improvements in Montgomery County, could begin in 1996, Brugh thought.
The Meadors often check out the competition for the state's road improvement money on Sunday afternoon drives.
"We've been on all these roads to see how other people are living. And I believe we're the worst. So far, I haven't seen any other roads this bad," Aloma Meador said.
Residents say it would be great to have a hardtop road, but for now they would settle for simply widening the stretch, removing trees, building a few guard rails and covering the road with gravel that doesn't wash away easily.
"I don't see why we can't have just little things like that," Richard Vaught said.
Some non-residents use the road as a shortcut from Shawsville to Christiansburg. Others hang out in the secluded area to drain beer cans and toss empties on the roadside, residents say.
But, Kenneth Meador advises, "The people who pass through here who don't have to are foolish."
The dusty road is so rocky that Roberta Vaught says she's "at the point of dragging a magnet behind my car" to pick up fallen pieces.
Residents figure somebody will have to die in an accident before improvements are made.
Vaught knows the story behind almost every bruised bush or tattered tree on the road.
"See that there?" he asks, pointing to a scraped tree sprouting on the edge of the road. "A buddy of mine hit that right there to avoid hitting a woman head on."
Around each bend are stories of people who moved away because they got tired of waiting for improvements. Undeveloped land there remains vacant because folks won't build until the road is better.
"If we didn't have such an investment in the place, we probably would leave," said Kenneth Meador, owner since 1987 of 133 acres fronting the road. "I guess we were foolish to think they would fix it."
Vaught added: "It's a shame you have to move out because of road conditions, when it could be fixed. . . . I don't imagine we would have moved up here if there was quite such a problem getting the road improved."