What to See in Salem - Top Sights and Attractions

Arena in Salem, Virginia. The Salem Civic Center is a 6,820-seat multi-purpose arena in Salem, Virginia. It was built in 1967 and is part of the James E. Taliaferro Sports and Entertainment Complex, which also includes the Salem Football Stadium and the Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium. The Salem Civic Center was originally known as the Salem-Roanoke Valley Civic Center, but the county withdrew its financial backing in the 1980s.

The civic center was home to the Salem Rebels and Salem Raiders ice hockey teams in the 1960s and 1970s. The NCAA Division III men's college basketball championship is currently held at the civic center. Boxing, professional wrestling, rodeos, and high school basketball games are typical events.

In addition to sporting events, the Salem Civic Center also hosts concerts, circuses, conventions and trade shows. The annual Roanoke Valley Horse Show and Salem Fair are held at the civic center and the adjacent grounds. It is also currently the largest convention facility in the Roanoke Valley; there is a total of 40,000 square feet (4,000 m2) of space in the main arena, the community room (which can be divided into three smaller rooms) and three other rooms.^[1]

Old Roanoke County Courthouse is a historic courthouse building located at Salem, Virginia. It was built in 1909-1910 and is a three-story, Classical Revival-style, yellow brick building. The front facade features a three-story, tetra-style Ionic order portico. The courthouse has a hipped roof topped by a cupola, which is topped by an eagle. A rear addition was built in 1948–1949. Also on the property is the contributing 1910 Civil War Memorial, that consists of a granite shaft topped by the figure of a Confederate soldier. The building housed Roanoke County, Virginia county offices until they moved to a new building in 1985.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. It is located in the Downtown Salem Historic District. Today the property is owned by Roanoke College.^[4]

Downtown Salem Historic District is a national historic district located at Salem, Virginia. The district encompasses 34 contributing buildings and 1 contributing site in downtown Salem. The district includes primarily mixed-use commercial buildings, but also includes churches, dwellings, a courthouse, a post office, a library, a park, and the covered stalls of a farmer's market. The buildings mostly date from the late-19th and early-20th century and are in a variety of popular architectural styles including Greek Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne. Notable buildings include the Stevens House or "Old Post House", Kizer-Webber Building, Duval-Oakey House, Salem High School, Old Salem Municipal Building and Fire Department, Quality Bakery Building, Olde Newberry Building, Salem Theater, and James J. True Building. Located in the district are the separately listed Old Roanoke County Courthouse, Salem Presbyterian Church, and Salem Post Office.

The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.^[7]

Arch bridge in Salem. Valley Railroad Bridge or Gish Branch Bridge is a historic limestone arch bridge located over Gish Branch at Salem, Virginia. It was built in 1873 by the firm of Claiborne Rice Mason, under the local guidance of Thomas Menifee, engineer and employee of Mason. Mason was head of a syndicate hoping to link major railways of the north and south at Salem, Virginia - specifically by linking the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, two of the major railways of the era.

Menifee and the other members of the Mason Syndicate began work on May 20, 1873. By late November 1874, the roadbed had been brought to grade from the Botetourt county line to the outskirts of Salem just south of Gish Branch, named for its crossing the homestead of farmer John Abraham Gish, one of the many German settlers in the region. All but the major stream crossings (Carvins, Peters, and Mason Creeks) were complete, awaiting additional funding. However, the September 1873 national financial panic and the resulting depression led the Mason Syndicate to abandon the Salem and Lexington connection. Today, the Gish Branch Bridge is an important part of the Roanoke Valley’s railroad heritage. It is the largest of the three remaining arch structures built by Menifee, the other structures and much of the completed roadbed destroyed by the passage of time and the increasing residential development of the area.

The Valley Railroad Bridge is a single-span, barrel-vaulted stone structure. The bridge structure is a semi-circular vaulted tunnel through a man-made earthen embankment. The bridge is an architecturally significant remnant of an unrealized transportation scheme dating to the Reconstruction Era following the American Civil War. The Valley Railroad was never completed to Salem, therefore the bridge, constructed in 1873, never fulfilled its intended purpose.

The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The length of the vaulted structure is 69 feet, not counting the flared, stepped, wing walls at both ends. The span is of the arch is 12 feet, and the keystones at each end of the barrel are 15 feet above the creek. The blocks of limestone, thought to have been quarried nearby, are squared, with roughly-dressed faces, and laid in distinct courses. The stones in the side walls are quite large, measuring up to 4½ feet long, 26 inches tall, and perhaps 2 or more feet wide. The voussoirs— stones within the vaulted ceiling— are smaller and more narrow in dimensions, appearing outwardly as uniform, almost square wedges. Outside the vault, the spandrel walls rise up to the rail bed, where a top course of limestone blocks, projecting slightly beyond the spandrel’s vertical plane, creates a parapet rising above the rail bed. The roughly-dressed faces of the stones are a form of rustication, intended to give the structure an ancient appearance.^[9]