Smith Mountain Lake
-In Virginia, a Blue Ridge Retreat That’s ‘a Little Undiscovered’
(Excerpt from NY Times by Robert Strauss pub 06.22.07)
JOSEPH RADA had been a New Jersey boy his whole life — born in Perth Amboy, grew up in Holmdel, worked in Elizabeth, raised a family in Lincroft. Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains were hardly on his mind.
“One day I was at work,
and one of my buddies said he bought a place on a lake down here and would I
come visit him on a vacation,” Mr. Rada, a retired supervisor for a natural
gas company, said of his first trip to Smith Mountain Lake, in 1992. “It
wasn’t a year before I bought a house here, too. Who in Jersey could have a
house overlooking a lake with a dock for a couple-hundred-thousand dollars?”
“It’s all too relaxing here,” he said. “I meet people all the time who come here for a second home or retirement from New Jersey.”
The lake, southeast of Roanoke, was created between 1963 and 1966 with the damming of the Roanoke River and some tributaries. The region around the lake takes in towns in Franklin, Pittsylvania and Bedford Counties.
Smith Mountain Lake has that odd combination of nothing and everything to do. “There aren’t really places to go clubbing or that many organized events,” said Rob Gerner, who attended the University of Virginia in the mid-1960s, moved to the region in the late 1970s and became a real estate agent there. “People tend to just use the lake in whatever way possible. They fish or boat or water-ski. They hike. They sit out and look at the scenery. It’s not a fast life here, just a good one.”
Lay of the Land
POPULATION The region around Smith Mountain Lake encompasses several towns in Franklin, Pittsylvania and Bedford Counties. The Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce estimates that the year-round population is 22,000. (Franklin County has the lowest tax rates, half of nearby Roanoke! SL)
SIZE The lake is 20,600 acres and has 500 miles of shoreline.
LOCATION The lake is about 25 miles southeast of Roanoke and 34 miles southwest of Lynchburg.
WHO’S BUYING Second-home buyers from North Carolina, Virginia, the Washington area, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
WHILE YOU’RE LOOKING Stay with us here at The Claiborne House Bed and Breakfast. We are centrally located to explore the lake, county and shoot over to Roanoke for the theater, fine dining and shopping. We have it all! Franklin County The "Wettest County in the World"