Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019 - 14

OUR BLUE RIDGE TOWNS

A River Town on the Rise
"A Moving River Experience" is what St. Paul, Virginia, promises visitors.
That . . . and a whole lot more.

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ST. PA IA
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Text and photos by JOAN VANNORSDALL

he day I arrive in St. Paul, lawyer/writer Frank
Kilgore and Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation supervisor Sharon Buchanan are flying high. The night before, the
deed was recorded for 271-acre Sugar Hill State
Park-eight miles of maintained trails winding
through 100 acres of woodlands and meadows.
It's the first official segment of the Clinch River State
Park, which will eventually run from Tazewell to Dungannon along the Clinch: Virginia's first linear, "blueway" park.
Kilgore and Buchanan take me on a leisurely tour
of the trail, which parallels the river, then rises up into
high meadows and back down. Kilgore, the son and
grandson of coal miners, owned the land before the
transfer and has put up interpretive signs to mark the
site of the first settler in Wise County, John English. All
that's left now is the chimney: English left the site when
his wife and two sons were killed by Shawnee in 1779.
He sold the land to Frenchman Baron Tuboeuf, killed
by thieves. The land was farmed and in the 1930s, was
used for production of maple syrup and sugar. Hence
the name: Sugar Hill.
The trail winds down to Bluebell Island, where ducks
float the Clinch, and great blue herons wade the shallows. On either side run coal trains: fewer than in the

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heyday of coal, but still plentiful. Where, in spring,
bluebells line the banks, and where, in August, Joe Pye
Weed and black-eyed Susans grow thick and tall.
"The Clinch River is one of the cleanest rivers in
the East," says Brad Kreps, director of the Nature Conservancy's Clinch Valley Program. "And it's one of the
most biologically diverse rivers in the world, home to
the greatest number of rare and endangered aquatic
species-fish and freshwater mussels."
Kreps is part of a dinner gathering at the Western
Front Hotel in downtown St. Paul, where 13 of the "St.
Paul Mafia" gather to tell the story of their town and
region. The Western Front-named to recognize earlier
St. Paul days of bordellos and bars "more dangerous
than a battlefield"-is a 30-room boutique hotel managed by Katrina Mullins, who came home after 15 years
in Colorado and says with pride, "We're willing to try
anything in St. Paul." A $7.8 million boutique hotel in
a town of 975 people? Indeed.
Telling stories is something these movers and shakers
do very well. They tell the story of the St. Paul Tomorrow group, which pulled together in 1998 to develop a
strategic plan in the wake of declining coal mining jobs.
They knew river recreation and tourism would be the
center of that plan, which in the 20 years since its development has seen great progress-including a much-

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Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2019

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