Lauderdale — Thirty Rooms on Looney Mill Creek
Near Roanoke, Virginia
In Botetourt County, Virginia, along the narrow valley carved by Looney Mill Creek before it meets the James River, stands one of the most substantial plantation houses in the region. Lauderdale is thirty rooms large, built on bricks that enslaved people made on the property itself, and it carries a history stretching back to the earliest European presence in the Virginia interior.
The story begins with James Lauderdale, who arrived in this part of Virginia around seventeen thirty, when the Shenandoah Valley and the ridges beyond it were still contested territory between colonial Virginia and the Native peoples whose hunting grounds they intersected. Lauderdale purchased three hundred sixty-six acres on the creek in seventeen forty-nine, and by seventeen ninety his family had built the plantation house that stands here today. The structure has grown and been modified over the two centuries since, accumulating Federal, Greek Revival, and Colonial Revival elements that trace the architectural tastes of successive generations, but the core is a document of late eighteenth century frontier prosperity.
The brickwork itself carries its own significance. The bricks in the walls of Lauderdale were manufactured on site by enslaved workers, a common practice on Virginia plantations where labor was compelled and material costs could be reduced by processing the local clay. The hand-carved woodwork inside, the high ceilings, and the ornate detailing were the products of the same system, built by people who received none of the wealth the house was meant to display.
In seventeen ninety-six, Lauderdale and four hundred forty-four surrounding acres passed to Colonel Henry Bowyer, who expanded the holdings. The plantation eventually encompassed twelve hundred acres. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register in two thousand seven, recognized as one of the largest and most intact antebellum houses in Botetourt County. It stands today beside Route Two Twenty, visible from the road that runs through the same valley the Lauderdales settled nearly three centuries ago.
