
Introduction
Roanoke, Virginia is located midway between New York City and Atlanta on Interstate 81, 168 miles west of the state capital, Richmond. The city is the center of one of Virginia's largest metropolitan regions, and a hub of transportation, finance, and industry for the southwestern part of the state. The scenic beauty of the Roanoke Valley, located between the Blue Ridge and the Virginia Allegheny Highlands, makes the city a pleasant as well as an economically diverse place to live and work.
Towns formed within what is now the City of Roanoke in the first decades of the 19th Century. A geographic location, west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and midway of the "great valley" between Maryland and Tennessee, has been the key to Roanoke's growth.
Hotels in Roanoke