Big Walker Lookout launches 80th season
When I came to know Ron Kime, I had just begun my career with this column in its infancy. Now, here I am more than two decades later, interviewing the man who, at one point, had a Wythe County amusement park that was the third-largest attraction in the state of Virginia with Dry Gulch Junction in the 1970s. Along with Ron himself, I interviewed Becky Helton, who performed as a singing showgirl in the Western attraction along with her sister, Caroline. It wasn’t until recent years that I found out Becky and I were actually cousins. She orchestrates the annual Cooley Reunion for my descendants every August at our family’s resting place in Galax, the Coal Creek Community Cemetery. Dave Vaught became a nationally touring magician after his work at Dry Gulch Junction and became a professional mentor to Eddie Armbrister, a Wytheville native who became a nationally touring magician himself. David Monaghan was the original marshal of Dry Gulch Junction and remains a friend of mine to this day. These four interviews were some of the first major columns I ever completed. Since then, I have completed the first draft of a Western novel based on Dry Gulch Junction. Other than my wife, Ron is the only person to have read the novel from cover to cover as it exists today. Although it needs a great deal of work before it can be released, my friend couldn’t have been kinder about the story that is dedicated to him. “It is awesome,” he stated. “You’ve put quite a twist on it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.” Of course, Dry Gulch Junction would never have happened without the genius and forethought of his father, Stuart Kime, who built the original Big Walker Lookout Tower and Big Walker Country Store eight decades ago. At 85, Ron still admired his father like no one else. “He left us early,” he lamented. “But he did more in his lifetime than most people who live a lot longer than he did.” Through a love of trains, Stuart Kime found a Shay locomotive that would be equipped to travel through the mountains. He purchased the legendary train and intended to build a theme park around it. Unfortunately, just as construction was nearing completion, Stuart Kime passed away at the age of 64 in 1972. Dry Gulch Junction would open the following fall. Ron met a man in Pocahontas who was tearing down genuine old storefronts. He convinced him to dismantle the buildings in a nonconventional way that left the fronts intact. “We were both too poor to do the job right,” Ron recalled. “I loaned him my truck to haul the lumber off and leave me with the storefronts here in Wytheville, and then I would buy the lumber from him.” That exchange was how Dry Gulch Junction was built. “It worked really well,” he remembered. “We had a good partnership going for a long time.” Though the monumental success of Dry Gulch Junction was eventually overpowered by tragedy, Ron says the attraction’s success was more the realization of a long-term goal than a surprise. “We put all our hopes and dreams into that place, and we were very happy that it turned out well,” he stated. “Today, however, we would never be able to afford country and western entertainers of the caliber that we had at Dry Gulch Junction in the 1970s.” Jim “Ed” Brown, Helen Cornelius and Dottie West drew as many as 3,500 people every weekend to the Wytheville tourist attraction until 1981, when every weekend was met with torrential downpours. It was a financial blow from which the park could never recover. Dry Gulch Junction closed permanently in 1982. It was reopened as Virginia City in 1999 when Jeanne Davis and Michael Hill, a couple from Greensboro, North Carolina, invested millions of dollars into renovating the vandalized buildings and saving the park. After 10 years and millions of dollars spent, Michael died following an ATV accident, forcing the property to be sold and the buildings to be permanently demolished. Despite that tragedy, along with many others throughout the course of Dry Gulch Junction’s history, Big Walker Lookout has remained the oldest scenic attraction in the state of Virginia and one of its most successful, operating continuously for 80 years as a family-owned business. Ron Kime happily operated the business himself until he officially retired at age 75 a decade ago. His daughter, Heather, oversees the current operations of the business, while his son, Michael, manages the construction and maintenance of the Big Walker properties. The first week of May kicked off the current season at Big Walker Lookout, which hosts artisans of all types and a series of old-time musicians every weekend through October. Big Walker Lookout has achieved notable status as a Crooked Road music venue and is recognized by the Virginia Is for Lovers state tourism program. “I have lived and worked in the greatest place and with the greatest people that I could have ever encountered in my life,” he stated. “I could not feel more blessed or be prouder of the work that has been done over the decades here.” Despite being born in Dallas, Texas, while his father was in the military, Stuart and Abigail Kime moved their family to the Wythe-Bland county line when Ron was just 5 years old. After eight decades, he has never looked back. “I am a Virginian,” he stated proudly. “I am a native of both Wythe and Bland County.” Looking back, Ron sums up his life with his most famous catchphrase: “Wonderful and marvelous.”