Blue Ridge Country Jan/Feb 2025 - 14

'YOU MAY THINK YOU KNOW US,
BUT WE'RE SOMETHNG ELSE'
CLOUD BOBBY PHOTOGRAPHY
Rocky Mount, Virginia
Nestled between the Blue Ridge and the Piedmont and
sitting halfway between Roanoke and Martinsville, Rocky
Mount claims its unique dual identities beautifully.
BY JOAN VANNORSDALL
CLOCKWISE
THIS PAGE:
The Harvester
Performance
Center in
downtown Rocky
Mount is a major
concert venue
in southwest
Virginia.
Murals are
everywhere in
downtown Rocky
Mount, with
mountains the
uniting feature.
Sitting across
from the
Harvester, Rocky
Mount's LOVE sign
tells the region's
story simply and
beautifully.
S
aturday morning at Rocky Mount's Citizen
Square, the Farmers Market is buzzing.
Flowers and herbs and vegetables and fruit.
Jams and jellies and honey and spices. Jewelry
and toys and totes. The farmers can tell you how
to make their chrysanthemum plants bloom again next
summer, and which tomatoes are best for canning. The
Old German Baptist Brethren orchardists can tell you
which of their minimally treated apples will last through
a basement winter, and their fall greens and pumpkins
stretch in long rows.
And across the front entrance of the Market is Rocky
Mount's LOVE sign, striking in its simplicity and symbolic
storyline:
L: copper and silver moonshine still lines
O: a massive farm tractor tire
V: a guitar angled behind a red Harvester sign
E: railroad ties, complete with spikes
Spend a couple days in this town of just under 5,000
residents, and it's clear they've got that sign down pat.
Rocky Mount is the seat of Franklin County, known
by most everyone as The Moonshine Capital of the
World. Yes...the world. The history of Franklin County's
moonshine production is book-length and novelfascinating.
Suffice it to say that well before Prohibition
and long after its repeal, folks in Franklin County were
growing corn and using it to distill liquor. Novelist Sherwood
Anderson put it this way in the November 2, 1935
issue of Liberty magazine:
The extreme wet spot, per number of people, isn't
New York or Chicago. By the undisputed evidence given
at a recent trial in the United States Court at Roanoke
JOAN VANNORSDALL
'RAISING THE SHADE' IN FRANKLIN COUNTY
A
ccording to military records, 70 African Americans (United States Colored
Troops) from Franklin County, Virginia, registered to fight in the Civil War.
And by the end of 2025, there will be a new monument erected in their memory,
and to honor the work they did before, during and after the Civil War.
A grant from Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia (MAAV) has provided
funding to the Franklin County NAACP to tell the story of the United
States Colored Troops (USCT). Additional funding was provided for community
outreach and conversation about the stories of African Americans in the
Franklin County/Southwest Virginia region.
COURTESY TOWN OF ROCKY MOUNT
14 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Blue Ridge Country Jan/Feb 2025

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