Union soldiers march to the field of battle in Saltville’s 11th annual re-enactment of the two attacks – one repelled, the other successful—on the Confederate salt works in 1864.  The soldiers followed the Well Fields Road from their camp to the battlefield, marking the re-enactment’s return from several years on the actual battleground in Broady Bottom.

Rural Retreat is known as the home of the famous Dr Pepper soft drink, but a new business in town is trying to carve out its own niche with a healthier form of liquid refreshment.
Boyer Milk Co. opened its doors at 439 Gienow Road behind Rural Retreat’s Food Country USA in early July.
The family-run business is owned by matriarch Debra Boyer who has been operating a dairy farm in Crockett for 40 years.
All of the milk sold at the store is farm fresh – locally produced and packaged on the same day.

For seven years, Appalachian Sustainable Development has given county schools a way to get students outside and learning.
Learning Landscapes program manager Denise Peterson said the project began small, in Greendale and Abingdon elementary schools, with students maintaining a class garden and doing other things that helped cover the state-mandated Standards of Learning. Recently, she said, the program expanded as new schools were brought into the fold. And the program is now looking beyond the six it incorporates, Peterson said. 

A pair of dead raccoons discovered on the same day last week in Washington County brought the number of rabies cases up to four in 2008.
The cases prompted the sheriff to issue a news release about the dead animals that had reportedly been in contact with vaccinated dogs.
Still, the number of reported cases, as of Aug. 9, before the two cases were discovered here, is below what it was at this time last year. According to Virginia Department of Health figures, 375 cases have been reported across the commonwealth since Jan. 1. By that same week, the 32nd, last year, the number was 451.
One health official insists the public keep up vigilance in efforts to hold the numbers down. 

he “Largest Home Improvement Company in America” could be settling into a home off Interstate 81’s Exit 19 in the coming months.
County leaders at a recent board meeting OK’d a request to rezone two parcels from A-2 Agriculture to B-2 Business, paving the way for a Lowe’s Home Improvement Store, according to County Administrator Mark Reeter.

A group of literal cross-country runners made a swing through Southwest Virginia on Monday, churning through 60 miles to honor 60 U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq.
The stretch from Abingdon to Wytheville was just a small portion of the runners’ 4,086-mile trek across the continental United States – one mile for each U.S. military member killed in Iraq from the first death in March 2003 through death No. 4,086 on June 3, 2008, a few days before the group began its journey.

Wilma Norton stepped out of the Washington County News office building on Main Street and saw a flash of green. Then nothing but leaves.
A huge tree branch had just broken off and came crashing down, flattening everything between it and the ground. Fortunately, neither Norton nor anyone else was hurt that afternoon on Aug. 5. But had Norton not answered the call of nature, Mother Nature might have killed her.

Standard maintenance was the reason Virginia Department of Transportation Public Affairs Officer Michelle Earl gave for Exit 14 being shut down Tuesday night.
According to Earl, workers were doing ordinary patching on the bridge substructure and several beams need repair.

Mary Edna Thompson peers into a pot of soup.
“There’s still some left,” she says, stirring it with a wooden spoon.

Shelley Williams said no one is pointing any fingers.
Williams, of the Department of Environmental Quality’s Southwest Regional Office in Abingdon, said the health of Wolf Creek and the Holston’s Middle Fork is everyone’s responsibility.
“It’s a watershed problem,” she said.