The Huntingdon Project

Still Standing.

Some places carry a weight you can feel before you ever learn their name.Places older than pavement. Older than street grids. Older than the idea of Roanoke itself.

Huntingdon is one of those places.

Off Williamson Road. Easy to miss. Blink and it’s gone behind you — just a hint of brick in the green.The house was built around 1819, when this valley was still wild. Before rail tracks. Before city limits. Before anyone called this place Roanoke. Back when Big Lick was just a muddy waypoint between farms.

Huntingdon survived all of that.And now it needs help.

A House the City Nearly Erased

The city eyed it for demolition.Old. Worn. Vacant. A risk. A liability.A line item in a spreadsheet.

Then a budget snag stopped the wrecking ball. A delay. A sliver of daylight.Just enough for the valley to notice what was about to be lost.

And people moved.

Neighbors stepped up.Historians stepped in.Local organizations started pulling threads together.Folks across the Roanoke Valley realized this wasn’t “just another old house.”This was a root. A landmark of who we were before we built who we are.

Dogwood & Deathcap joined the coalition, not leading it, but standing with the people who are. Our role is support: awareness, connections, resources, and the 10% Community Fund ready to back real preservation work. This is the kind of thing we were built for.

What Makes Huntingdon Matter

The 1991 National Register paperwork laid the bones out plain:

• Federal-style central passage plan

• Flemish-bond brickwork with grapevine joints

• Greek Revival porches, added mid-1800s

• A home carved from a 500-acre frontier tract

• A surviving Betts family cemetery tucked beside the house

• A now-lost two-room outbuilding, believed to have been used as slave quarters, demolished sometime after 2020

That last detail stings. History slips quickly when no one fights for it.

And that’s the point, Huntingdon predates the railroad, the name “Roanoke,” the grid of streets, the neighborhoods, the factories, the rise and fall of the Norfolk & Western. It predates nearly everything around it.

It’s a thread back to the frontier era. A reminder that people lived here long before the city grew, settlers, farmers, enslaved laborers, families trying to carve life out of the valley’s early dawn.

You cannot rebuild 1819. You can only save it or lose it.

Where Things Actually Stand

Huntingdon has been on preservation radars before, labeled endangered as early as 2019, though it’s not on the state’s official list this year. It remains vacant, deteriorating, and increasingly vulnerable to vandalism.

Local groups are mobilizing, but momentum shifts. Some days urgent, some days quiet.City departments continue reviewing dilapidated properties, and no one can assume Huntingdon will sit idle forever.

The fight isn’t loud yet, but it’s real.

Here’s the actual path forward:

Work with the current owner

Open negotiation is happening. That’s crucial.

Stabilize the structure

Stop the decay before it becomes irreversible.

Secure funding

Grants, donations, and community support will determine what happens next.

Let the preservation experts do their job

Architects. Structural engineers. Restoration pros.

Commit for the long run

Saving Huntingdon isn’t a month-long project. It’s a years-long one.

The good news: No one is alone in this.There’s a team forming, a coalition that’s growing.

Why Dogwood & Deathcap Cares

Because home matters. Because some places deserve to stay standing. Because communities inherit more than deeds and property lines, we inherit responsibility.

Huntingdon holds Appalachian dawn.Enslaved history.Frontier grit.Stories mortared into the walls.

Saving it means preserving a truth too important to lose.

Dogwood & Deathcap exists to put 10% of profit back into the Blue Ridge, into youth, land, culture, and the things that connect us. This is one of those things.

Our part isn’t leading. It’s standing with the people who are. Offering time, support, and whatever resources we can bring when the coalition needs them.

How People Can Help

Right now, the project is still forming its structure. As details solidify, we’ll share:

• Contact points for the lead groups

• Volunteer opportunities

• Donation channels

• Workdays

• Preservation updates

• Public meetings

In the meantime:

Talk about Huntingdon. Most people in Roanoke have no idea it exists.

Share the story. History survives because people pass it on.

Support local preservation efforts. Small wins stack into big ones.

A Valley Landmark at a Turning Point

Huntingdon has stood for more than 200 years. Through wars. Floods. The railroad boom. The city’s rise. The region’s shifts and storms. Someone, at every point in its life, chose to leave it standing.

Now the choice is ours.

Cut this thread, and we lose a piece of ourselves. Save it, and we carry one of the valley's oldest homes into the next century, a rare, irreplaceable witness to the story of Roanoke.

This one’s worth fighting for.

— Dogwood & Deathcap