Elliston, VA

Elliston is a Montgomery County community built along an older crossroads between Roanoke and Christiansburg. The place began as Big Spring, and its depot became a stop on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad before investors tried to turn it into a bigger industrial center called Carnegie City. The railroad chose Roanoke for its main shops, leaving Elliston with a smaller but still visible rail story: tracks, a train stop, Oldtown along the Valley Road, and the post–Civil War neighborhood known as the Brake. The volunteer fire department, organized in 1957, is another part of the local map.