Tracing Our Roots: A Tour of Laurel Branch Road

The tour begins in the Topeco Community and explores the scenic 7.38 miles of Laurel Branch Road and about five miles of Floyd Highway. Additional points of interest on side roads add to the written narrative provided by the tour’s creator and guide, Janet Slusher Keith, who grew up on a Virginia Century Farm on Laurel Branch Road. Her ancestor, Christopher Slusher, Sr., was among Revolutionary War veterans claiming patents for land here in the early 1800s, joining settlers Elijah Hylton and Benjamin Weddle. Topeco and Laurel Branch communities grew as early families built their homes, farms, churches and schools. The anguish of the Civil War era remains in the cemeteries and the stories: from raids and epidemics, to sheltering deserters, to Union Gen. George Stoneman’s army camping on Shelor and Bishop meadows after emptying smokehouses, granaries and barns along the Pike from the Hylton plantation to Jacksonville (later the town of Floyd).