Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993 TAG: 9305100324
SECTION: DISCOVER PAGE: 5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CLAYTOR LAKE LENGTH: Long
Baldwin was leaning over his porch railing at Claytor Lake, looking out on acres and acres of sun-dappled blue.
He was barefoot. Sunshine spilled all over him. A balmy breeze swept over the porch, and over Baldwin - who had a grin on his face.
The truth is, it is not a terrible way to have to live at all, and he knows it.
Baldwin and his wife, Marie, know all about life at the lake. They've been coming here for half a century.
Morris Baldwin, 73, believes they were the first couple ever to ski on the man-made lake, created along a 20-mile stretch of the New River in the late 1939 by a utility company.
They had a house on the lake shore for years. In 1991 they moved to their condominium at Mallard Point to avoid the upkeep on their house and yard.
Now they split their time between Claytor Lake, Southern California and the open road in their motor home.
"We have the best life in the world," Marie Baldwin said.
On this warm afternoon in April, at least, life at Pulaski County's Claytor Lake seems hard to beat.
There is the warm sun and the cool breeze. The rugged, picturesque slopes. The smooth, lazy-looking lake itself, with its ducks floating above and its bass and catfish presumably teeming below.
People have pulled man-sized muskies from Claytor Lake. Catfish have been found here weighing 50 pounds and more. Wild turkeys roam the wooded shores.
One should be honest, of course.
It is not always April, or sunny. Claytor Lake has been known to float litter ranging from dead cows to plastic panels.
And by midseason - say, Fourth of July weekend - the tranquil lake surface will be a moil of boats, skiers and battling wakes. The sound of hundreds of powerful engines will thunder from the Claytor Lake basin like a stock car race, with the mosquito-like buzz of jet skis above it.
Even at its worst, however, Claytor Lake is peaceful compared to its better known and much larger counterpart, Smith Mountain Lake, residents say.
Veteran lake livers - and lake lovers - say the summer noise simply comes with the territory, anyway.
"We're used to that," Baldwin said. "We tune it out."
Claytor Lake is barely one fifth the size of Smith Mountain Lake.
When the larger lake opened in the 1960s, it actually drew the boaters who came here from Northern Virginia and Richmond away from Claytor, say those familiar with the lake.
That is fine with Claytor Lake residents - who say Claytor's placid beauty is much of its appeal.
They speak of the changing seasons. Of birds and autumn leaves. Of the sun that can stain the glassy lake a dozen different colors as it sinks below the horizon in the fall.
"In the fall of the year, after the hot rodders go home, it's beautiful here," said Paul Armbrister, one of many retirees who live at the lake.
In winter, too, Armbrister said.
"Occasionally the lake freezes over and it's beautiful. If snow falls on it after it freezes over, it's breathtaking."
How does Armbrister think his lake stacks up against the other one?
"I don't know. I've never been to Smith Mountain Lake," he said.
"Our lake is clean," said his wife, Hazel.
Claytor Lake features "more of a laid-back approach" than Smith Mountain Lake, said Clarke Cunningham, a Realtor and developer of Mallard Point - the condominium neighborhood on the lakefront where the Baldwins live.
"Young people would probably prefer Smith Mountain," said Cunningham, who works in Radford. "The people we've talked to like it [Claytor] because it's not as crowded or as noisy."
The people who live around the lake, meanwhile, are a blend of the wealthy and not-so-wealthy - and of those with day jobs and those past working age. Mallard Point, Cunningham said, is divided more or less evenly between retirees and working people. One couple comes up for the weekends from North Carolina.
Claytor Lake was built by what is now the Appalachian Power Company. It stretches along the New River from its dam near Radford to near Allisonia.
Claytor's 4,500 acres of lake surface compare to nearly 21,000 acres at Smith Mountain some 50 miles away. Claytor has 102 miles of shoreline, compared to about 500 for Smith Mountain.
Both lakes were created to produce hydroelectric power, but Claytor Lake is much the older. Claytor Dam was completed in 1939. The dam creating Smith Mountain Lake was completed in 1966.
Thus, Claytor has a more settled quality. Over the years, its summer cabins have begun to give way to year-round homes. Children have grown up along its shores.
In half a century, too, prime undeveloped lakefront property has become a scarce commodity, observers say.
"Lake land is just awfully hard to find anymore," Marie Baldwin said.
Much of Claytor Lake's shoreline either has been developed, is closely held private land or is virtually inaccessible, said Radford Realtor Terry McCraw.
The development that has taken place, meanwhile, is "a real duke's mixture. You've got everything from $5,000 mobile homes to $350,000 residential properties," McCraw said.
Some people simply have bought tracts of land where they can park a mobile home or put in a boat dock for occasional use, he said.
Lake dwellers are a blend of year-round dwellers and weekend and vacation visitors, McCraw said. Some of the summer homes are far from rustic cabins, however, and can be worth several hundred thousand dollars, he said.
Lakefront lots can run from $25,000 to $100,000, said McCraw - with a $25,000 lot often close to straight up and down.
Claytor Lake is located close enough to the West Virginia border to attract a number of vacationers or retirees from Bluefield and Princeton.
Others who live here are natives - like Hazel Armbrister, who grew up on a farm across the cove where she and her husband live now.
Paul Armbrister, who managed Western Auto stores in Pulaski and Giles counties before his retirement, said they used their house as a summer home before his semiretirement in the 1970s. They have since remodeled it for year-round living.
"Come out and look at our view," Armbrister says, walking onto the deck behind his roomy ranch house, in the neighborhood known as Dunkard's Bottom.
The view from the deck includes a square of grass, some trees and shrubs, a dock on which rests Armbrister's fishing boat, and an elbow of the lake called Dublin Hollow.
"Isn't it lovely?" he asked. "When the trees and things bud in another two or three weeks, it's going to be delightful."
Have they ever thought of leaving?
"Never!" Hazel Armbrister said.
"It never entered our mind," her husband said. "It would be difficult to find a place even to visit that would equal this."
And he may be right.
by CNB