Credits, Acknowledgements, Additional Resources

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the Fortune/Hall family in the growth and development of the Town of Damascus.

Louise Fortune Hall, in particular, was central to the story. Her father, was appointed the first mayor of Damascus in 1904. Mrs. Hall herself was closely involved in commercial, civic, cultural, and environmental aspects of the community. She was widely recognized as the town historian, writing two brief books about Damascus, one on her own and one in collaboration with her daughter, Marilou Preston.

When she died in 2008 her family offered Mrs. Hall's papers, including ledgers, deeds, minutes from meetings, railroad timetables and routes through the mountains up as far as Jefferson, N.C. and Mountain City, TN., and her own notes on people, places, and events spanning close to a century, to the Washington County Public Library in Abingdon. The Library catalogued these papers and some additional material and they are stored in archival boxes at the Damascus Branch of the WCPL. They can be accessed there by appointment.* A list of materials in the Hall Collection can be found online at http://www.archives-wcpl.net/Archive7_Hall/Hall_Collection.html

Thanks to Jack Hall, Eleanor Hutton, and Marilou Hall Preston, for their trust and support.

Bibliography of related resources:

• Verbal history of Damascus, Virginia 1759 to present (2001) / copywritten by Bron W. Duncan, Jr.
  [Self-published, 2004]
• A history of Damascus, Virginia, 1793-1950 / Louise Fortune Hall
  [Damascus? 1950] 
• A history of Damascus, Virginia, 1950-1978/ Louise Fortune Hall and Marilou Preston Hall
  c1978 (Bristol, Va. : Quality Printers) c1978
• Friendliest Town on the Trail: Damascus, Virginia / Bunny Medeiros
  [Abingdon, Va.] : Bunny Medeiros : Reed & Blake Press, ©2014
• A brief history of the "Virginia Creeper" : the famed Abingdon branch of the Norfolk and Western Railway / by Thomas H. Blevins
  [S.l. : s.n.], c2003
• The "Virginia Creeper" : remembering the Virginia-Carolina railway / by Doug McGuinn
  [Boone, N.C.?] : D. McGuinn : [printed by] Bamboo Books, c1998
• Green Gold : the story of the Hassinger Lumber Company of Konnarock, Virginia / by Doug McGuinn
  Boone, N.C. : Bamboo Books, c2008.
• The last steam railroad in America : from Tidewater to Whitetop / photographs by O. Winston Link ; text by Thomas H. Garver.
  New York : H.N. Abrams, 1995.
• An oral history of Konnarock, Virginia / by William B. Gable and Edward H. Davis
  Charlottesvile, Va. : Published with a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, 1997
• The Virginia Creeper Trail companion : nature and history along southwest Virginia's national recreation trail / Edward H. Davis, Edward B. Morgan
  Johnson City, Tenn. : Overmountain Press, c1997.
• Brigadier General John D. Imboden : Confederate commander in the Shenandoah / Spencer C. Tucker
  Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2003. c2003

*Please note. Due to restrictions resulting from the Pandemic, all libraries are currently closed. See the Library's webpage for further information.