Troutville: Three Brothers and a Railroad Stop
Near Roanoke, Virginia
When the railroad reached this spot in eighteen eighty-one, workers needed something to call the new station. Three nearby farmhouses happened to be occupied by three brothers named Trout, John, Jim, and Jorge, so they called the place Troutsville.
It turned out to be a lucky name. Within a decade the community had grown into an active shipping center, with canneries, packing houses, and farm goods moving out through the depot. By eighteen ninety-five it was described as a thriving town.
The name eventually shed the extra syllable, and Troutville was officially incorporated in nineteen fifty-six. Today it sits in Botetourt County just north of Roanoke along what was the old Valley Pike, the same road that moved settlers and soldiers up and down the Shenandoah for two centuries before Interstate Eighty-One replaced it.
