Salem, Roanoke County, Map, 1878

Salem, Virginia, is an independent city within the boundaries of Roanoke County. The first known European exploration of the area occurred in 1671. Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam gave the area its first recorded name: Totero Town, after the local indigenous village of the Totero people, who supplied them with a guide to help with further exploration. Salem, as it would later become known, was a small settlement providing services to those traveling on the Great Road, a network of rough paths that followed waterways and the mountains. The Great Road would eventually run from Philadelphia to the James River by 1745 and be extended to reach North Carolina by 1748.

At the time this map was drawn, the principal farm products in the area were wheat, corn, and tobacco. Iron and copper ore were among the natural resources found in the area. Salem was also home to two higher education institutions: an all-male preparatory school called the Virginia Institute and the all-female Roanoke Women’s College. In 1853, the Virginia Institute received its charter and was renamed Roanoke College. Julius Dreher, Roanoke's third university president, was an early leader in seeking to increase the college's internationalism. From the 1870s through the 1890s, he recruited heavily among the Choctaw in Oklahoma Territory. The first Mexican student came in 1876 and the first Japanese student in 1888. Roanoke College was among the first American colleges or universities to grant degrees to Korean students. Roanoke Women's College later was renamed Elizabeth College before being destroyed by fire in 1921. The female students finished the academic term at Roanoke College, which became coeducational in 1930.

History: VS.1, VS.2, VS.8, USI.1, USI.2, USI.9
Art: 4.7, 5.7
Earth Science: ES.6, ES.8

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Look at It: Look at the map. What information is provided on the map and the map legend?

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