
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 1, 1993                   TAG: 9312010021
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: NAFFS                                LENGTH: Medium

ANOTHER ROUTE TO CONFORMITY

Cahas Mountain is a rugged introduction to the Blue Ridge, a brawny mountain of rock that rises from the Callaway valley and is sometimes shrouded in clouds. It's an imposing sentinel at the gateway from the Piedmont, a steely reminder that life here is not the same as it is on the red-clay, tobacco-bearing swells of Franklin County.

Logic would say there's no reason to go right over the behemoth. There are easier, flatter, safer ways to travel from Callaway to Roanoke or back. Nearby is U.S. 220, ample evidence that traversing the Blue Ridge with asphalt is never easy.

But to mountain folk, a 3,000-foot summit is nothing to shirk - it's a challenge.

And so there's a road, Virginia 726, that mounts Cahas Mountain in northwestern Franklin County.

On the Naffs side, climbing up and away from Roanoke County, the hardtop road is lined by rows of apple trees, picking gnarled paths that follow the contours of the mountain.

On the Callaway side are beef cattle grazing in straw-yellow pastures that fold deep into ravines.

Virginia 726 is one of those roads that makes you at once question why you'd ever live in town, and count your blessings that you do.

It's not a road for icy weather. Its serpentine twists and gut-twisting plummets and about-faces weren't cut for winter driving.

As Virginia 726 reaches its pinnacle - eventually it shows some sound judgment and it skirts the Cahas summit - the roadway narrows. Easing around the blind curves, you almost wouldn't be surprised to come face to windshield with a red-cheeked lad wearing lederhosen, walking a flock of sheep between meadows.

You can almost hear the groaning wood joints of the Conestoga wagon, hear the mules huffing. It's a horse-cart road, cut by early settlers and never widened much. It's still not wide enough for two cars; and there are no guardrails between the road and the ravines.

Still, it's impossible to drive Virginia 726 without pausing at the tiptop. To the north is a windy view of mountains a long-distance phone call away, a panorama so blue and vast and airy it's humbling.

It's an eccentric road.

At least it used to be.

The Virginia Department of Transportation is paying $299,999.90 to have Virginia 726 widened to 18 feet. Where you could hear only wind in the cedars, there's a grader scraping now.

Great cascades of battleship-gray rocks cascade down the mountainside to buttress the road's new width.

It is progress, come to Cahas Mountain with a vengeance, providing an alternate route from the headwaters of the Blackwater River to Starkey Road, strip malls and Tanglewood.

What for? Why spend so much on a road that means so little to so few?

Engineering is not so different from culture. It's good at eradicating eccentricities.

by CNB