Vinton: From Gish's Mill to the Blue Ridge Gateway
Near Roanoke, Virginia
The town of Vinton traces its roots to seventeen ninety-seven, when the Gish family built a gristmill on Glade Creek and the surrounding settlement took the name Gish's Mill. For the better part of the eighteen hundreds the community grew slowly around that mill, serving farmers hauling grain out of the Blue Ridge hollows.
Everything changed in the eighteen seventies as Virginia rail lines merged into the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad, later the Norfolk and Western. A depot appeared near Glade Creek, and the Gish family led a push to formally incorporate. In eighteen eighty-four the town was chartered as Vinton, erasing Gish's Mill from the map. Today Vinton sits near the Blue Ridge Parkway, a quiet railroad-era town that found a second life as a gateway to the mountain scenery above.
