North Fork Valley Rural Historic District

Stretching about nine miles along the North Fork of the Roanoke River in Montgomery County, Virginia, this rural district includes bottomland farms, steep wooded hollows and ridge-top clearings on Paris Mountain. It holds 144 contributing resources, including farmhouses, barns, three standing mills, two churches, an early twentieth-century school and the crossroads village of Lusters Gate. Settlement began in the 1740s and 1750s, and the earliest surviving houses are log dwellings, followed by brick Federal houses such as the Woods-Grubb House, antebellum center-passage houses with Greek Revival trim, and later farmhouses with sawn ornament. The 1850s McDonald Mill and the brick Bennetts Mill reflect local industry, and archaeological testing at the Woods-Grubb Farm found a smokehouse site and a tanyard. Several farms remain with descendants of early builders, and dairy and cattle operations continue on the valley floor, preserving a landscape shaped by successive farming methods.