Snowville Historic District

Snowville is a small village strung along State Route 693 in a bend of the Little River in Pulaski County, Virginia. Cabinetmaker Asiel Snow settled there in 1833, drawn by the river's water power, and the village became the county's manufacturing center by the 1850s, with a linseed-oil factory, sawmill and wool-carding operation. The railroad bypassed it in the mid 1850s and it declined. The district includes 21 contributing buildings, among them a church, a Masonic temple, a school, a former blacksmith shop and many wood-frame houses, plus a cemetery. Most are vernacular, and several show Greek Revival detailing. Dr. Chester Bullard helped establish the Christian Church in southwestern Virginia. The village also had the county's first Masonic temple, newspaper and public library. Similar scale and materials, open surrounding land and few modern intrusions keep the nineteenth-century rural character of a pre-railroad industrial village.