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Rockfish Gap Outfitters searches for buyer with his passion Published Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, 9:17 pm Join AFP's 100,000+ followers on Facebook Purchase a subscription to AFP | Subscribe to AFP podcasts on iTunes News, press releases, letters to the editor: augustafreepress2@gmail.com By Rebecca J. Barnabi Rockfish Gap Outfitters owner Chuck Walker. Photo by Rebecca J. Barnabi. WAYNESBORO — Rockfish Gap Outfitters remains open while owner Chuck Walker awaits a new owner to take over the business and hopefully carry it on as he has since 1998. The store has been at 1416 East Main Street si...

Along the AT, retailers are gearing up for more long-distance hikers than last year.

Completed after eight years of digging and blasting in 1858, the Blue Ridge railroad tunnel was at the time the longest in the USA: 4,273 feet through Rockfish Gap in Afton Mountain. Sixteen Irishmen and three enslaved men were killed during its construction, and uncounted others died from disease. According to one of the informative signs that line the tunnel's approach, the enslaved workers were usually assigned the less dangerous jobs, because they were considered more valuable than the Irish. A wider replacement tunnel was opened in 1944, and this tunnel mostly sat abandoned for over 70 y...

By Ray Cox Special to The Roanoke Times An unspoken founding principle of this newspaper is it is always a good time to tell a railroad story. Such being so, we turn again to esteemed historian John R. Hildebrand, our conductor on previous excursions on the long defunct but never forgotten Valley Railroad. Hidebrand utilized an engineering background and his natural storytelling gifts to detail the history of the never finished line from Staunton to Salem in his 2001 “Iron Horses in the Valley: The Valley and Shenandoah Valley Railroads, 1866-1882.” Therein, he detailed ...