ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: SALTVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
The director of a museum project based on archaeological discoveries in this area has resigned.
"I've got to pursue some interests of my own," said Edward Verner, a native of England who will be opening a shop in nearby Abingdon to sell European art prints.
The Saltville Foundation, which has been working on the creation of the Museum of the Middle Appalachians for several years, announced this week that it has accepted Verner's resignation and named Steven Thompson as interim director.
Thompson, who is vice president of the foundation's board of trustees, is on the faculty of the Department of Architecture at Virginia Tech. Before coming to Blacksburg, he worked for 12 years as an architect in Charleston, S.C.
Jerry McDonald, foundation president, said Wednesday that the position is being called interim director but there are no immediate plans to hire or seek anyone else to lead the museum project.
He said Thompson is familiar with the foundation's goals and brings a strong mix of talent, experience and knowledge to the position. He said the plans for the museum "are going to proceed apace. There's no reason to drop the baton at all."
McDonald is the researcher who helped interest the Smithsonian Institution and the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Saltville as an archaeological research site, because of the layer of mud beneath a prehistoric river which preserved fossils and human artifacts alike over thousands of years.
Earlier this month, McDonald announced the carbon-dating of some of those artifacts at nearly 14,000 years of age, moving back the human presence in the Western Hemisphere by about 1,000 years from the oldest previous verified remains.
Those are the kinds of finds that prompted the concept of a regional museum in Saltville, which could display the bones of the various mastodon, musk ox and other prehistoric creatures uncovered in the area, as well as educational exhibits on how early Paleo-Indian cultures lived. Saltville also has historical interest stemming from Civil War conflicts in which Union troops tried to wreck the salt works because salt was a vital preservative for the Confederacy; the space age, because the hydrazine component for rocket fuel once was manufactured at the Olin Chemical Co. in Saltville; and the scene of one of the earliest industrial shutdowns due to new environmental regulations when the Olin plant closed in the 1970s.
"Everything is set up and ready to go," Verner said of the museum project. "And now it's really up to the board of trustees to start raising the money. That's their job."
Verner said he plans to stay in the Saltville area. "I'm opening a print shop in Abingdon - not for cranking out business cards. This is 17th-century European prints and watercolors and oil paintings. ... I think the cheapest is $35, going up to thousands."
His supplier will be a print shop already existing in Orange County, where Verner lived before moving to Saltville.
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