Gladys Meador Hoover grew up in the heart of Moneta, later to become the northeast side of Smith Mountain Lake. Established in the 1880s around John Thaxton’s general store, Moneta acquired its first passenger railroad in 1909 and began to flourish.

Downtown Moneta had five to seven stores with a wooden sidewalk that led to the local school. It was here that Howard Meador, Thaxton’s nephew, built his home. Hoover, the youngest of Meador’s daughters, one of 11 children, remembers fondly the sounds of the old saw mill and blacksmith’s shop nearby.

The local physician, Dr. Sam Rucker, whose house and office were across and up the street from the Meadors’ home, provided the townspeople with all their medical care in the early 1900s.

"Dr. Sam practiced medicine amid squirts of tobacco juice and you paid what you could," according to the late Kenneth Crouch, who wrote a history of the area for the lake’s 25th anniversary. Oftentimes, the revered doctor would make house calls, even though those pot-holed, dirt-filled back roads were tough on his car. Frequently, he sought out the mechanical services of Richard Saunders, who owned a garage and grocery store nearby.

Saunders would alert the community when Dr. Sam’s car was on its last leg. "The Ruritans would help raise money to buy Dr. Sam a new auto. We’d just ask people to throw in (some money)," Saunders explained.

The Moneta Ruritan Club, chartered in 1954, was also instrumental in the development of a Medical Center (after Dr. Sam retired), and establishing and building a fire department for the community, Saunders, a Ruritan founding member recalled.

"I remember that preacher from Bethlehem Methodist Church," Saunders said. "He’d come down, roll up his sleeves and get to working on building that new fire house."

Working Together

While there were several Baptist and Methodist churches in the area, those of the Catholic faith met in private homes to celebrate Mass. When their numbers exceeded their meeting space capacity in the late 1970s, the Catholics approached the Methodists at Bethlehem and asked to use their sanctuary on Saturday evenings.

Years later, after Resurrection Catholic Church had been built, the Catholics were approached by a fledgling church group of Lake residents looking for a temporary location to hold an ecumenical service comprised of Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

According to Sister Betty Bagen, "We were privileged to be able to return the hospitality shown to us by Bethlehem by sharing our facility with Trinity." Eventually, in 1997, Trinity Ecumenical Parish built their own church building.

Preserving the Rural Flavor

Agriculture was still the biggest business in the area back when S. W. "Pete" and Lula May Woodford established a poultry farm in 1923, just outside Moneta on Route 122. Their four boys helped in the family business.

In 1965, after his father’s death, Calvin Woodford bought the family’s poultry farm. His wife, Macklyn, and their five children were kept busy raising 28,000 laying hens and producing over 12,000 dozen eggs per week. Still, Calvin saw the need to provide more services to the area, and expanded to include hardware and farm equipment.

As the lake residential areas began to grow, so did Calvin’s Moneta Farm Service. Eventually the poultry operation was phased out to make way for new products now in demand: lawn and garden supplies,nursery stock, irrigation systems, dock supplies, lumber, power equipment and more.

In the early 1990s, the local Lions Club took a one-room schoolhouse — used by William Duncan not long after the Civil War — and relocated it to Dudley Elementary School. The Halesford Academy— later called the Duncan School — was completely rebuilt and furnished as a living educational museum. Area schools today are invited to send students back in time and re-live life in a one-room schoolhouse!

Several modern-day retailers at the lake have helped preserve other significant structures in the area. The Holland Duncan House, formerly the home of Asa Holland, who in 1848 hired Duncan to educate his children, was recently purchased and refurbished to display an interior design service, with a complementary retail and gift shop.

Owner Lynne Hines, looking for a new location for Creative Design Services/Lyndi’s, was thrilled with the opportunity to "rescue" the historic home from possible demolition for commercial development.

"We’ve been careful to preserve several artifacts we’ve uncovered while renovating the house," Hines said. "We hope to have them on display along with a history of the area and the house."

Preserving the Lake

The most aggressive advocates for maintaining the beauty and serenity of the lake waters are the volunteer directors of the Smith Mountain Lake Association. Originally founded in 1969 as a businessman’s organization, the SMLA now includes property owners and others with interest in the lake who are concerned with the environmental, ecological and safety aspects of the lake and its waters.

Bordering three counties — Pittsylvania, Franklin and Bedford — the lake began to grow slowly at first as local area residents looked for summer and retirement homes. In a few short years, the word had begun to spread that Smith Mountain Lake was a jewel in southwest Virginia.

It was while building a home at the lake that Jeanne Wagoner, searching for a fundraising project for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, came up with the idea of a home tour at Smith Mountain Lake.

Wagoner and her late husband, Joe, felt people would be interested in seeing the variety, styles, decor and landscaping being used in the homes being built in the area.

In 1991, while Jeanne coordinated the efforts to feature ten special homes on the tour, Joe solicited sponsors to help underwrite the costs of the event. Friends and neighbors — 300 in all — joined in the planning. A black-tie dinner was organized to honor the homeowners and major sponsors of the tour, and an auction was added as an additional source of funds for the tour.

Despite months of preparation, Jeanne was still uncertain the home tour would be a success.

It was. While its organizers had initially hoped to raise at least $10,000, the home tour actually brought in just under $50,000!

In 1997, the home tour elected its own board of directors and became incorporated as the Smith Mountain Lake Charity Home Tour, maintaining an affiliation with the National MS Society, but extending the opportunity for other local charities to share in the proceeds.

As it celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2000, the SML Charity Home Tour is proud of the fact that it has raised over $1.2 million for its charities.

Close to Paradise