New Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center will pay tribute to nature, history
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story listed the incorrect namesake of Preston’s restaurant. The story has been updated.
When The Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center opens its doors early this summer, the facility's restaurant, private dining rooms, lounge, and conference rooms will bear names that pay tribute to Virginia Tech's history or that recognize local geology and landmarks.
The Inn’s elegant restaurant, Preston’s, will memorialize Col. William Preston, a leader of westward expansion and a prominent Southwestern Virginia Revolutionary War patriot who came to settle at the Eastern Continental Divide and established Smithfield as his home.
The two private dining rooms adjacent to the restaurant also honor university history and tradition. The 1872 Salon commemorates Virginia Tech's 1872 founding as a land-grant college, while the Old Guard — the only name retained from the Donaldson Brown Hotel and Conference Center — pays tribute to senior alumni who become members of the Old Guard upon the 50th anniversary of their graduation.
The Continental Divide lounge, next to Preston's, recalls Blacksburg's location on the Eastern Continental Divide — the boundary line between springs and streams that ultimately flow into the Gulf of Mexico and those that flow into the Atlantic Ocean.
The names selected for conference rooms in the Skelton Conference Center refer to local landmarks, both natural and man-made. Solitude, the largest conference room, takes its name from the oldest building on campus. First built as a log cabin in 1801, Solitude was developed into a plantation house and ultimately became the home of two Virginia governors. Because of its rich historical and architectural heritage, Solitude was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and named a Virginia Historic Landmark in 1989.
Another conference room will be named for The Huckleberry, the railroad train that brought generations of students to the Huckleberry Station in Blacksburg. The train also carried students from Blacksburg to out-of-town football games until the automobile displaced railroads as primary transportation. A six-mile section of the abandoned Huckleberry rail line has been converted into the Huckleberry Trail, a popular walking and bicycle path that runs from Blacksburg to New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg. Other conference room names will be Smithfield; Drillfield; Duck Pond; Cascades; Draper's Meadow; Ellett Valley; and New River.
