Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 13, 1993 TAG: 9308130175
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SALTVILLE LENGTH: Long
It started in 1982 when he was on the Radford University faculty and took students to Saltville each summer to chip away at the fossil-rich soil around this town on the border of Smyth and Washington counties.
More recently McDonald has led summer digs by volunteers as part of a Virginia Museum of Natural History project. Participants have been housed in a building owned by Virginia Tech's Department of Geology just outside of the town.
Now McDonald is president of the board of directors of the Saltville Foundation, a nonprofit corporation chartered in 1991 as an educational, research and preservation organization with the goal of establishing an exhibit and research museum and community outreach programs to preserve and enhance the natural and cultural heritage of the middle Applachian region.
The foundation recently announced plans to build a $15 million, three-level 65,000-square-foot museum here before the end of the century.
"And that certainly means a lot of money going into the regional economy, because the people who come to see this are going to be the more highly educated people and have more disposable income," he said. "It's going to affect all of Southwest Virginia to a degree."
Today McDonald is a partner in the Blacksburg-based McDon- ald & Woodward Publishing Co. But that has not stopped his regular four-hour round trips to Saltville.
"There's just so much at Saltville. It has a very rich past for such a small place," he said.
A natural clay seal has preserved remnants dating back before recorded history, from prehistoric fossils to traces of early Native Americans. Deposits of salt drew prehistoric animals here when a river flowed through this valley 13,000 to 15,000 years ago.
McDonald said one site being explored "stands a very good chance of addressing one of the most important questions of North American archaeology, and that is the arrival of humans on the continent."
The Smithsonian Institution sponsored the first excavation at Saltville in 1964, after the Olin Corp. turned up a wealth of fossils digging a channel. Saltville first piqued McDonald's interest in 1980 when a town employee uncovered some bones which, it turned out, belonged to a prehistoric musk ox.
Other discoveries followed, including when one of McDonald's teams uncovered the fossilized tracks of a 13,500-year-old ground sloth in 1991. Only one other set of tracks for the now-extinct mammal has ever been found in North America. The various fossils are currently scattered in different museums and research facilities.
The museum also can show the role that salt has played in preserving food and its use in making other products over the past 200 years. "So much of the history of it was written at Saltville," McDonald said.
The salt production made Saltville a strategic target in the Civil War, and many of the fortifications dating from attacks on "the Salt Capital of the Confederacy" have been preserved.
Saltville was a company town until the Olin Corp. closed its plant here as one of the first casualties of tougher national environmental regulations. It drew national publicity, including a Life Magazine article in the March 26, 1971, issue.
One of the products Olin made at Saltville was hydrazine, a component of rocket fuel linking Saltville's prehistoric past to the space age future. All of these facets of Saltville will be reflected in the planned Museum of the Middle Appalachians, as it is being called.
Fund-raising efforts for the first phase are under way. Donors who give between now and the end of the year will become founding members of the museum. Further information is available from the Saltville Foundation, P.O. Box 910, Saltville, Va. 24370.
The initial goal is $200,000, to cover the costs of a director for two years who can pursue other phases of the project. Area merchants who stand to benefit from museum traffic are being solicited for contributions.
Already about $11,000 has been raised. "One night we got $6,000 right on the spot. One afternoon another guy and I got $3,000," McDonald said. "When we have $100,000, we'll hire the director."
The second phase, to be under way next year, will see detailed museum plans and continued fund raising. The third phase is actual construction, with the museum to be completed perhaps before the end of 1996. A final phase will see creation of an endowment fund and program expansion to full operational levels.
One museum level will be underground and the other two above ground. The theme of time will tie together the 12 planned mainstream exhibits through which visitors will walk. Each main exhibit will branch off into satellite exhibits.
Classrooms and a public auditorium are also planned. "We're talking about a really dynamic place where facts and concepts are going to be represented," McDonald said.
by CNB