Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994 TAG: 9405150050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CRIPPLE CREEK LENGTH: Long
First, the Virginia Department of Transportation eliminated the name of this Wythe County village from the official state road map.
Then, when Cripple Creek payback time arrived Saturday, it rained.
But the show went on. Just as townsfolk set a match to a pile of road maps, the sun came out, and it was hard to tell which swelled higher - the flames or civic pride.
Nothing like a good, old-fashioned map burning to rout the demons.
Southern Wythe County between Ivanhoe and Speedwell appeared as a void on those old maps, which were quickly reduced to ashes as the main attraction of Cripple Creek's fifth annual Homecoming celebration.
No one knows exactly when VDOT's mapmakers erased Cripple Creek. Or why.
"There's plenty of space on the map. Look around you here. There's nothing space," said Jack Crosswell, the Atlas of Cripple Creek's cartographic revival.
Sometime between 1954, when his wife left Cripple Creek for college, and 1988, when she and Crosswell moved back, this village - once a bustling mining town - was awarded the same status that author Gertrude Stein gave Oakland, Calif.: "There's no there there."
That oversight made it difficult for out-of-town company, Crosswell said. "People wanted to come see me and couldn't find it."
Moreover, many of the 150 or so residents of Cripple Creek took the designation as a non-place personally.
"We take pride in our community," said Ed Younce, who doubles as Cripple Creek's postmaster and general store proprietor.
The village appears on his Funk & Wagnall's world map but not on a Virginia highway map, Younce said. "That's not right."
Smoldering resentment burst into flame after Crosswell took up Cripple Creek's cause.
A rural renaissance man - he's a retired police chief and a member of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors - Crosswell writes a column in the Southwest Virginia Enterprise, the local weekly newspaper.
It's titled "Beck 'n Me." Beck is a talking mule, sort of a cornpone Mr. Ed, and the column recounts his conversations with Crosswell.
State Sen. Jack Reasor, D-Bluefield, a faithful reader of "Beck 'n Me," decided VDOT should be up on Cripple Creek.
"All I did was write a simple letter and make a couple phone calls," Reasor said, modestly.
Evidently his nudge got VDOT's attention, because the agency agreed to acknowledge Cripple Creek.
People who already knew the way through the back roads and green hills to Cripple Creek arrived at this year's Homecoming with a spirit of vindication.
"Burn The Maps - Keep Our Flag," read a sign attached to a pickup truck.
Reasor earned lusty cheers when he announced from the event's stage, a flatbed trailer, "Cripple Creek will be on the next Virginia state map."
There was a time, from the late 19th century until the Depression, when southern Wythe County was the Ruhr Valley of Virginia, an industrial dynamo with iron mines and smelting furnaces lining Cripple Creek.
The town was built to house industrial workers. An early 19th century panoramic photograph of Cripple Creek shows neat rows of small frame houses in a bare hollow.
Like other places in Western Virginia, the area boomed after the Norfolk & Western Railway ran a spur line in the 1880s to the mines and furnaces. Prosperity dwindled during the 20th century, until the mines closed and the tracks were ripped up.
Much of Cripple Creek was dismantled, too. Yet that era produced the community's measure of fame, the venerable bluegrass standard "Going Up Cripple Creek," a tune about a blue-eyed gal "straight and true."
Experts say it's not clear which Cripple Creek - there are others in various states - the song refers to. But don't tell that to the local folks, particularly those who wore "Going Up Cripple Creek" T-shirts to the Homecoming.
If you find Cripple Creek on the new highway map, and want to visit, you'll find $2 haircuts at Lester Crowder's barbershop.
Just down the road at the Cripple Creek General Store (also known as the Cripple Creek Mall) is an old-time collection of the vital and miscellaneous. Everything - except beer and cigarettes - is here somewhere, but owner Younce says only he can find it.
"It's a nice place," said James "Blackeye" Wright, Cripple Creek's unofficial mayor. "No crime, no nothing."
Wright lived in Richmond (VDOT headquarters) while he drove a truck. Now retired and back in his hometown, he was the mastermind behind Cripple Creek's annual homecoming celebration.
Doling out scoops of barbecue for attendees, Wright said the map controversy didn't cause him any heartburn. "We always knew where it was at."
The day had a lighthearted tone. Yet Reasor said the disappearance of Cripple Creek was symbolic of contemporary power struggles between rural and urban areas of Virginia.
During his three years in the General Assembly, Reasor said, he's seen few votes that split along strict party lines, but many that divided city and country into separate yet unequal blocks.
Cripple Creek is not about to be sold downriver again. Crosswell is buoyed by the community's restoration, and he has a new vision.
"We've been thinking about joining with the Roanoke mayor and getting an Amtrak stop put in here," he said.
by CNB