Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311160260
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-14 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
Howard and Joyce Barrett will continue to offer private charters for trips aboard their Pioneer Maid, but its public schedule of cruises won't begin again until April of next year.
``We live in a special place, and other people who are less fortunate will pay good money to experience it for a limited period of time,'' Howard Barrett, said recently.
He also noted that it is not unheard of for a vacationing industry executive to ponder future plant locations at a place he or she finds enjoyable.
But it is not easy in Virginia to get bank financing for tourism ventures, Barrett said at a meeting of the Southwest Virginia Tourism Infrastructure Strategic Planning Study Commission.
When he and his wife took their 50-page business plan for their enterprise to the bank where he and his father had done business for decades, the bankers were less than interested. ``Well, I don't think houseboats are a good investment,'' one finally told him, obviously not having read the business plan at all.
Barrett said he also found government development programs to be biased against tourism, Virginia's second-largest industry.
The smallest ad that a tourism venture can buy in state publications costs $1,000, he said. ``We've got to have a lot of boat rides to come up with a thousand bucks . . . We seem to be starving the goose that lays the golden egg. A well-fed goose will lay a much better and larger egg.''
Programs such as the revolving loan fund being established by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, could be helpful to tourism ventures, he said.
The boat venture employs only about 10 people, Barrett said. But it also supports catering services for meals on board, laundry, gasoline and other vendors. It also refers visitors to places like the shopping mall at Fort Chiswell and other area attractions.
These vendors and attractions ``have all experienced growth, thanks to our efforts,'' he said.
Barrett, who lives in Austinville, recalled sitting with his grandfather, who never traveled more than 30 miles from home, watching sunsets in the evening. ``He used to tell me the Lord made this place first. All the other places were leftover pieces.''
Besides its scenic beauty, he said, the region has a history of interest to outsiders.
``Davey Crockett didn't spend his life on a mountain top in Tennessee. He spent most of it in Southwest Virginia,'' Barrett said. In fact, he worked for a long time in a hat shop in Christiansburg.
Stephen Austin may have founded the republic of Texas, Barrett said, but he was born in Barrett's home community of Austinville, named for Austin's father who ran the lead mines there.
Lead from those mines and salt from the Saltville area were strategic resources for the South during the Civil War, he said. Wythe County was one of two places in the South where percussion caps for firearms were made.
``Southwest Virginia was high on the Yankees' hit list,'' Barrett said, which explains why some battles were fought in Wythe County and Saltville.
Barrett offers these and other bits of history during cruises offering meals popularized by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson or served during the Civil War.
by CNB