Well, OK, I’m too lazy to head over to Teh Google to figure out if the “New River Valley” mentioned in so many IDs from stations in and around Blacksburg, Virginia is indeed the valley surrounding something called the “New River,” or maybe an actual “new” river valley.
What I do know is that it’s a very pretty part of the world out there, stretched out along I-81 as it meanders south and west from Roanoke down into Virginia’s western tip, and it’s just far enough out of Roanoke to count as a separate – and new to Toppy – market.
And we toured exactly one of those stations, prominently featured in this week’s Tower Site of the Week, so go visit. (Buy a calendar, too, while you’re there!)
PS – OK, I decided not to be that lazy after all. Turns out the New River is a tributary of the Kanawha River; it doesn’t actually run right past Blacksburg itself, though it comes close; and downstream in West Virginia, it flows through a dramatic gorge that’s spanned by an even more dramatic bridge (the “New River Gorge Bridge,” natch) that was featured on the West Virginia state quarter. Better yet, there’s a radio connection – Noah Adams, former host of NPR’s All Things Considered, wrote a book about the river a few years back! Or so Wikipedia tells me…
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