Lick Run to the Roanoke River
Roanoke, Virginia, was formerly named Big Lick. Popular lore has it that Native Americans would corner large game in the Roanoke Valley at a spot long buried beneath the rubble and asphalt near the intersection of Campbell Avenue and Second Street in the heart of the Star City.
From their beginnings in the headwaters near Lafayette in Montgomery County, Virginia, the North and South Forks of the Roanoke River combine and flow as one waterway along the border of Floyd County before crossing the Roanoke Valley into Salem, Virginia, and eventually Roanoke (click for a USGS satellite image of the Roanoke River winding through the city).
The River is fed in the heart of the Star City by two “runs” that meet at a confluence in ancient sewer pipes and water courses beneath Roanoke. On a quiet morning at certain spots in downtown Roanoke, one can hear the dull gurgling of the confluence as the river passes beneath the City.
At one time, Roanokers who live near the corner of Fairland Road and Kirkland Drive in the northwest sector of the City remember swimming in Fairland Lake, an embankment of Lick Run that removed following a major flood in the mid-80’s. One of the most prolific natural springs in the Roanoke Valley can be found in a concrete spring box just past some scrub brush and tangled trees at the Fairland-Kirkland intersection.
You can still see the old lifeguard stand rusting within the spring box erected near the once-popular neighborhood lake.
Evans Spring, the site of one of the earliest settlements in the Roanoke Valley, is largely ignored these days, though the gush of the productive spring continues to join Lick Run in its descent toward the Roanoke River.
Evans Spring still unleashes thousands of gallons of fresh water a day, which is sent out across a series of mud flats within a largely undisturbed and unvisited part of Roanoke’s natural landscape.
Lick Run is a natural conduit for run-off from much of the northern section of the City. The storm waters course straight down the run, after collecting garbage, fertilizer residue from public and private property, pet waste, oil from neighboring I-81 and silt from roadside repairs and construction.
The length of Lick Run aids the creek’s ability to filter out some pollutants before joining Trout Run beneath Roanoke; however, any mitigation is significantly out-weighed by the sheer volume of noxious substances entering the river from multiple sources along the waterway.
The Lick Run Greenway follows Lick Run into Roanoke from the outskirts of town (for great pictures of the Lick Run Greenway, visit NokeNews.com).
Any effort to improve the health of the Roanoke River from the Star City to Smith Mountain Lake must include an honest assessment of how the natural features of Lick Run can be adjusted to enhance the creek’s ability both to control the flow of storm water into the Roanoke River and to mitigate damage to the watershed from non-point source pollution.
Pictures and story by Hank Bostwick.