A Virginia Coal Town Finds a New Natural Resource: Serpentine Roads for Motorcycling

By 1999, when Larry Davidson ended his 27-year military career and moved back to the Virginia mining town where his parents lived, the coal industry was dying, and the town of Tazewell with it. The businesses that thrived on coal — belt manufacturers, lathing companies, welding companies — had gradually disappeared. The once-affluent Main Street was blighted with empty storefronts. “You could not even buy a soft drink on Main Street, and that is a fact,” said Todd Day, Tazewell’s city manager. “Not even from a drink machine.”

Davidson thought about the problem, sometimes when riding his Aprilia Tuono motorcycle along Virginia’s scenic Route 16, which twists 32 miles between Tazewell and Marion. On one ride in 2010, he said, he had an epiphany. While Tazewell was losing one natural resource — coal — there was another to replace it: the serpentine roads around him. He remembers thinking, “This road is a hidden natural resource for tourism and development.”

A similar strategy had worked for Deal’s Gap, an area on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. In the 1990s, local entrepreneurs branded a curvy stretch of road “Tail of the Dragon,” boasting “318 turns in 11 miles.” It became an internationally known motorcycle and sports car tourist attraction.

Davidson, now 70, noted that Route 16 rolled over three mountains and decided that “Back of the Dragon” made a pretty good name. He tested its marketing potential by printing a dozen dragon-logo T-shirts, putting them in a backpack, and then riding in search of motorcyclists who had stopped to admire the mountain vistas. He sold the entire lot of T-shirts in about a day, he said.

Since then, Davidson has worked with regional tourism groups and elected officials to promote the drive. It appears to be working: Last year an estimated 60,000 motorcycle and sports car enthusiasts came through town, up from 16,000 in 2013, said David Woodard, the director of community development for Tazewell County. Four restaurants have opened on Tazewell’s Main Street since 2017.

Tazewell, population 4,240, is a prime example of a southwest Virginia coalfield town converting to what Chris Cannon, executive director of the economic development group Friends of Southwest Virginia, calls the creative economy. “We focus on natural and cultural assets,” rather than coal, tobacco and lumber, he said. The area has a bluegrass music heritage trail, a crafts collective and outdoor activities like ATV riding, hiking, mountain biking and river running. “We as a region are trying to diversify,” said Cannon. “Everyone is trying to find their niche.”

Davidson grew up in West Virginia’s Canebrake coal camp, where the houses were owned by New River & Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Co. — known to locals as “Pokey fuel.” His father worked in the company’s mines for 32 years. “I had a Huck Finn life,” said Davidson. He hunted squirrel, fished in the camp’s creek and was surrounded by a diverse group of miners who could be heard speaking their native Italian, Hungarian and German. “The people who lived in the camps were so colorful,” he said. “Everybody knew everybody.” His parents later moved to Tazewell, about 17 miles across the Virginia border.

The mines had been the engine of prosperity since the 1880s, about the time the town of Tazewell was founded. There some grand houses still stand, many on the national historic register, and in 1904 it claimed to be the smallest town in America to have an electric trolley, which ran from the train station into town. By 1974, the trolley was long gone, and with coal in decline, the Tazewell train station closed too.

Davidson left to join the Air Force in 1967 and returned in 1977 to try mining himself. That didn’t last, and he joined the Army, which eventually sent him to Europe. The roads there planted a seed. “We’d go down in Berchtesgaden and into Austria, Switzerland, Italy, in the Alps, and that was my experience with those roads,” he said. “That’s what made me look at Back of the Dragon when I got back here.”

After his T-shirt experiment, Davidson called on an acquaintance of his sister’s, Margie Douglass, the tourism director of Tazewell County. “He came into my office and had a humongous picture of a dragon, and was carrying his motorcycle helmet,” Douglass said. Davidson told her about Tennessee’s Tail of the Dragon. “He said, ‘The Tail has nothing on this area. It just needs to be marketed,'” Douglass said. “He was so excited by it, it was hard not to get excited too.”

Douglass introduced him to regional tourism development groups, eventually got a grant to print brochures and helped get Route 16 designated Back of the Dragon by the Virginia Legislature in 2012. It was an easy sell, said Morgan Griffith, a Republican congressman who helped guide the bill for his home district. “They are coming up with a lot of ideas that don’t cost a lot of money,” he said. “You get a couple of thousand people spending a little money in the community and it starts to add up.”

Community organizations also pitched in, such as Tazewell Today, a group of citizens dedicated to reviving Main Street. It’s headed by Irma Mitchell, the proprietor of a restaurant called the Front Porch and a resident for nearly 80 years. “Back of the Dragon was the driving force,” she said. “The bikes were coming through, but they were coming straight on through. We had to give them a reason to stop.”

Modeling itself on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street America programs, the group raised money locally and sought grants regionally and federally. The group hired Hill Studio, a community-planning consultant in Roanoke, Virginia, which recommended physical improvements to Main Street, and Tazewell started holding events like an annual “Trucks and Tractors” gathering.

The town also created a tax incentive program, now three years old, which offers any new business four consecutive years of abatement on several taxes, including real estate and personal property, if the business commits to stay an additional five years. “If you are going to build a building on virgin ground, that savings is astronomical,” said Day, the city manager.

The new establishments on Main Street include a microbrewery and a coffee shop. Just off Main are a doughnut trailer and a gas station converted to a burrito stand. James Oliver, a local developer who is a partner in a Holiday Inn Express & Suites in nearby Lebanon, Virginia, said he was negotiating to put another hotel on Main street. The town’s only accommodation now is the former jail, built in 1832, which has been converted to a two-room inn.

The next scheduled construction on Main is Davidson’s Back of the Dragon Welcome Center. Davidson, his partner and two out-of-town investors who remain anonymous have ordered a 5,000-square-foot building. He hopes to offer food services and — of course — dragon souvenirs.

It will also offer a photo op: An area artist is carving a 12-foot-tall red-and-black dragon that will have amber LED eyes. “Yes, it’s about the dollar, but it’s not just about the dollar,” said Davidson. “I want other people to understand what is here is a jewel.”