Nace is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Botetourt County Botetourt County ( ) is a US county that lies in the Roanoke Region of Virginia. Located in the mountainous portion of the state, the county is bordered by two major ranges, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains. Botetourt Co ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, United States. The small town was originally known as "Houston", but "As for the name Nace, that was in honor of George Washington Fayette Nace, a prominent local farmer born Feb. 1, 1822, and died Aug. 19, 1890." The town had an orchard, truck farms (otherwise known as

Market garden A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under to s ...

s), and a tomato cannery. The cannery was owned by E. C. Firestone, and was known as the Firestone Canning Corporation.

Geology

The small

Brachiopod Brachiopods (), phylum (biology), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear e ...

Acrotreta buttsi (n. sp). is found in the

Rome Formation The Rome Formation is a geologic formation in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. It preserves fossils dating back to the Cambrian period. See also * List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Tennessee * Paleontology in Tennessee Paleontolog ...

. "Growth lines are clear, but other surface markings appear to be lacking. Interior impressions have a straight depression extending more than half the length of the valve. Lower

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

, Rome; (loc. 17h) at C. and 0. Station, Waynesboro; and (100. 25v) half a mile south of Nace, Virginia ..." The town also had an iron mine nearby. "Getting back to the town’s first name, that came from an iron mining operation up the mountain from there. Artifacts of the mine are still scattered at the site, Jack Rader said. Houston Mine was a property of

Tredegar Iron Works The Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, was the biggest ironworks in the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and a significant factor in the decision to make Richmond the Confederate capital. Tredegar supplied about half the art ...

of Richmond, at one time one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the South. The company provided ordnance to the Confederacy and helped further the statewide railroad building boom after the Civil War. An affiliated business of the mine was Crozier Iron & Steel in Roanoke, which provided materials for the

Norfolk and Western Railway The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precisio ...

in its early days during the late 19th century." There was also a small dairy and some

Manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

mining in Nace.

Transportation

The town had a railway station at milepost 225 for the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and had a US Post Office from 1883 to 1964. A portion of Virginia State Route 640 in

is still known locally as "Nace Road". "Alternating lane closures will be in place on a section of Route 11 from 1 mile north of Route 640 (Nace Rd.) to the I-81 on Ramp at Exit 162 for milling, paving and pavement marking operations."Virginia Department of Transportation. August 11, 2017
"Botetourt County road work report for mid-August"
Roanoke Times.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Botetourt County, Virginia Unincorporated communities in Virginia