Two women have found their own ways of preserving the histories of Virginia’s smallest forgotten towns, from opening a restaurant to publishing a book.

A white picket fence and U.S. flag sit in Eggleston. The town once was bustling, with tourists who had come to experience the sulphur spring in the town and with industry brought by its status as a transportation hub at the time.EGGLESTON — The Winnebego disgorged its passengers on Village Street, where they seemed to skulk around The Palisades Restaurant.Owner Shaena Muldoon wondered what they were looking for.

When she asked, she got one of many history lessons this place has to teach.

The old general store has been transformed into The Palisades, a local foods restaurant.The family had traveled from Indiana and Kentucky to see where their great-grandfather practiced medicine in the once-booming town of Eggleston Springs, Muldoon said.On the same floor with a cellar and a coal chute, the doctor had off

ered his services in Pyne General Store.Today it is the basement of Muldoon’s 2-year-old restaurant and music venue.

An old general store cash register still has a place at The Palisades Restaurant in Eggleston.From boom to bust to new stirrings of revitalization, much has changed in Eggleston.

In the 1830s, the supposed healing properties of Eggleston’s sulphur spring built a tourist destination, followed in the 1880s by the railroad.

A building referred to as the Ice Cream Parlor sits across the street from The Palisades Restaurant.A thriving transport hub, the community built a high school, a general store and a Chevrolet dealership. But, as with many rural communities, the Great Depression of the 1930s pointed the town’s fortunes downward.

Slowly, businesses, and even the school, closed.

But the old general store remained, and in 1998, this living relic was “discovered” by Virginia Tech architecture student Kirsten Sparenborg.

From that encounter came an idea for a wide-ranging project that took Sparenborg to dozens of similarly “lost” communities across Virginia, where she interviewed residents and photographed forgotten places.

Shaena Muldoon, owner of The Palisades Restaurant, holds a copy of the book View more of this amazing article from the Roanoke Times here .