25. Troutdale

In June 1976, as cyclists made their way across the country during the Bikecentennial, a ground-breaking ceremony in a small town in the mountains of Grayson County celebrated plans to open the Troutdale Community Health Clinic. The health clinic was built near the intersection of route 16 and route 603, less than a mile from the route followed by cyclists riding the Bikecentennial in the summer of 1976. A few cyclists might have observed this ground-breaking ceremony or the construction of this facility that continued through the summer and into the fall. An article in a regional newspaper included a photograph of the ground-breaking ceremony, a list of speakers representing regional organizations, and the statement that Troutdale had not had professional medical care for nearly fifty years, since the early 1920s. This timing is suggestive of the history of Troutdale, but of small towns more generally, as it reveals a trajectory where the economic growth of the early twentieth century was not sustained in the subsequent decades. A history of Troutdale thus provides a basis for exploring the history of small town America in the century before the Bikecentennial and in the half-century that has followed. This episode is connected to the community of Troutdale, located about 450 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just under 100 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound rides enter Virginia.