Roanoke – Star City of the South

January 06, 2014  •  Leave a Comment

In going through some old photos, I ran across a photo of downtown Roanoke, Virginia taken from the overlook on Mill Mountain.  I took this a number of years ago and played around with overlaying our star on the nighttime shot.   

(C)Carol R Huffman

Roanoke is nicknamed the Star City of the South because of that man made electrified star.  It stands nearly 90 feet tall and supposedly can be seen for up to 60 miles away.  Built in 1949 to celebrate the Christmas season, it still shines nightly over our city.

 

The Mill Mountain Star was initially lit in all white neon but turned red for 2 nights whenever there had been a traffic fatality in my town.  I remember the feeling I would have as a kid when I’d look up to see the blood red color.  In 1976, the colors were changed to red, white and blue to commemorate our country’s bicentennial celebration.  After that, the star’s colors have changed back and forth to memorialize certain events, such 911 and the VA Tech Massacre.  Today, it’s back to white. 

 

Electrical energy consumption for the star is 17,500 watts or 17.5 kilowatts.  Making some assumptions on how it's metered and knowing the cost of electricity in Roanoke and that it shines from dusk til midnight, the cost to operate the star is probably an average of about $250 per month.  The star has been shining since 1949 so that's 64 years X 12 months X $250 or $192,000.  Our population is just under 100,000.  So that's less than 2 bucks each to have the star shine over our city all these years.   

Carol Huffman

 

 


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