Appalachian Community Histories – Cana, Carroll County: Moravian Churches, Mountain Schools, and the Apple Industry
Along the southern edge of Carroll County, Virginia, where the Blue Ridge Mountains descend toward the North Carolina Piedmont, the community of Cana developed through generations of farming, religious activity, education, and commerce. Situated near the state line along the corridor now followed by U.S. Route 52, Cana became closely connected with nearby Mount Airy, North Carolina, while retaining the institutions and traditions of its mountain surroundings.
Unlike Hillsville or other incorporated communities in southwestern Virginia, Cana did not develop around a formal municipal government or a single established town center. Its history instead emerged among scattered farms, churches, schools, stores, and neighboring settlements, many of which served families spread across the ridges and valleys of southern Carroll County. Roads through Wards Gap, Fancy Gap, and surrounding communities connected residents with regional markets, while local institutions helped maintain the relationships necessary for life in a relatively isolated agricultural district.
The earliest history of the settlement remains difficult to establish with certainty. Although nineteenth-century postal records and church histories demonstrate that an identifiable community existed long before the twentieth century, the precise origin of Cana’s name and the date when it first became recognized as a settlement have not been conclusively documented. Historical land records, census schedules, and post office records nevertheless provide evidence of the region’s development, while the surviving histories of its churches offer a particularly useful starting point.
Carroll County itself was established in 1842 from Grayson County, with additional territory transferred from Patrick County in 1856. The Library of Virginia preserves numerous courthouse records dating from the county’s establishment, including deeds, wills, taxation records, and court proceedings that document the larger agricultural society in which Cana emerged.
For Cana, however, one of the clearest surviving accounts of nineteenth-century community development begins not with a courthouse or a business, but with religious missionaries traveling into the mountains from North Carolina.
The Moravian Missionaries and Mount Bethel Church
During the 1830s, the Moravian Church of Salem, North Carolina, began extending its missionary activities into the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Among those responsible for encouraging this work was Van Neman Zevely, a layman who had traveled through the region and recognized opportunities for establishing congregations beyond the Moravian settlements of North Carolina.
According to the Moravian Archives, Zevely’s travels helped inspire the establishment of a home mission society in Salem in 1835. He frequently accompanied ordained ministers into the mountains, including Henry A. Shultz, S. Thomas Pfohl, and Christian Lewis Rights, whose visits introduced Moravian religious services to families living considerable distances from existing congregations.
The work proceeded slowly. Although the mountain residents showed an interest in the denomination, the Moravian Church initially hesitated to establish permanent congregations so far from its principal settlements. Distance, limited transportation, and the difficulty of supporting ministers in isolated communities complicated the effort, even as local residents continued requesting religious services.
By November 18, 1851, missionary Francis F. Hagen reported that a committee had been formed to organize a congregation in the Virginia mountains. On February 5, 1852, the Country Ministers Conference identified the developing congregation as Mount Bethel, and construction began on a church building along Wards Gap Road.
The decisive moment came on November 24 and 25, 1852, when Bishop John G. Herman dedicated the building and formally organized Mount Bethel Moravian Church. The congregation represented an important expansion of the Moravian Church beyond its established settlements, but it also provided the Cana region with an institution whose history can be traced through surviving denominational records.
Maintaining the church was not easy. The Moravian Archives notes that pastors often traveled approximately fifty miles from other congregations to conduct services, a journey that could require two days during the nineteenth century. Resident ministers were uncommon, and religious gatherings depended on the willingness of visiting clergy and local members to maintain the congregation despite the distance separating it from other Moravian communities.
Nevertheless, Mount Bethel continued to serve the region. Its influence eventually extended beyond Cana, helping establish connections with Willow Hill in the Ararat area during the 1890s and with Moravian families who later formed part of Grace Moravian Church in Mount Airy.
During the pastorate of C. D. Crouch in the 1920s and 1930s, the Mount Bethel congregation undertook substantial improvements. A new wooden church replaced the original building in 1924, followed by construction of a mission house during the early 1930s that served both as a parsonage and as a center for community activities.
Additional changes came during the 1960s, when a Christian education building was constructed and the church received a brick exterior. The improved facilities were dedicated on November 19, 1967, more than a century after the original congregation had been organized.
Mount Bethel’s development illustrates the importance of religious institutions in the history of Cana. The church provided more than occasional worship services, becoming part of a network of relationships through which families, ministers, and neighboring communities maintained connections across the Virginia and North Carolina mountains.
Crooked Oak and the Expansion of Mountain Religious Life
Mount Bethel was not the only Moravian congregation associated with the Cana region. During the early twentieth century, another religious movement developed at Crooked Oak, where an informal gathering beside a roadside tree eventually led to the construction of a permanent church.
The Moravian Archives traces the beginning of this effort to the summer of 1920, when Alfred M. Dawson, a member of Willow Hill Moravian Church, encountered a nearby community with limited opportunities for regular religious services. Dawson arranged a gathering beneath a crooked oak tree beside the road, and the response encouraged him to continue holding services outdoors whenever weather permitted.
The meetings gradually attracted attention from other Moravian workers, including Reverend C. D. Crouch, who became responsible for the denomination’s mountain missionary activities. On May 13, 1923, Crouch and Dawson walked approximately six miles down the mountain to conduct a service at the established roadside meeting place.
The growing interest in regular worship eventually led to the donation of land for a permanent building. Construction progressed slowly, but on July 17, 1927, Bishop Edward Rondthaler consecrated Crooked Oak Moravian Church.
The church’s difficulties did not end with the completion of its building. Despite the dedication of its members and visiting ministers, the congregation struggled to expand, and the Provincial Elders Conference voted in 1955 to discontinue the work. Local members resisted the prospect of losing their church, however, and the congregation experienced renewed support during the 1960s through the involvement of members from Bethabara and local lay leadership.
The Crooked Oak story resembles that of Mount Bethel in several important ways. Both congregations emerged from missionary efforts directed toward scattered mountain communities, and both relied heavily on individuals willing to organize gatherings, maintain buildings, and continue religious activities despite limited resources.
Their histories also demonstrate how closely the Cana region remained connected with the Moravian communities of northwestern North Carolina, particularly those centered around Salem and Mount Airy.
The Cana Post Office and the Changing Mountain Roads
By the late nineteenth century, Cana had become sufficiently established to appear in postal and geographic records, reflecting the importance of communication services for families living throughout the surrounding countryside.
In an agricultural community where residents were separated by considerable distances, the post office was an important connection with the outside world. Letters provided communication between relatives, newspapers brought reports from beyond Carroll County, and postal service supported the exchange of information necessary for farms and businesses.
The United States Postal Service preserves an especially significant date in Cana’s history. Its historical listing of Virginia rural delivery routes identifies June 15, 1904, as the date when the first rural free delivery route was established at the Cana Post Office.
The expansion of rural free delivery represented a considerable improvement for isolated communities. Rather than requiring every household to travel to a central postal location to receive correspondence, carriers could deliver mail along established routes, helping rural residents maintain more regular connections with regional and national affairs.
The 1904 date does not represent the founding of Cana or necessarily the establishment of its original post office, which existed earlier. It instead documents the expansion of a particular postal service, providing a firm chronological point in the community’s development.
Additional evidence concerning Cana’s postal history survives in collections maintained by the Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization and the National Archives. These include postmaster appointment records and historical reports of post office site locations, which can be useful for tracing the movement of postal facilities, identifying early postmasters, and reconstructing former roads.
Transportation was equally important to the community’s development. Wards Gap Road connected farms and churches with neighboring settlements, while the route now followed by U.S. 52 became an important connection between the Virginia mountains and Mount Airy.
Historical road maps preserved by the Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization document the county’s transportation system through much of the twentieth century, including maps dating to 1932 and successive years. These records provide a means of studying how roads changed as automobiles, commercial trucks, and improved highways gradually transformed travel through the region.
For Cana, the development of transportation and postal services helped connect an agricultural community with markets and institutions located beyond the immediate mountain landscape.
The One-Room Schools of Cana
Education formed another important part of Cana’s development, although the early school system looked considerably different from the consolidated facilities that later served the community.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, children throughout rural Carroll County commonly attended small neighborhood schools, many consisting of a single classroom in which one teacher instructed students of several ages and grade levels.
The Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization has preserved historical school censuses beginning in 1890, along with teachers’ reports, licensing records, and directories identifying former school buildings. These records demonstrate the extent of the county’s neighborhood school system and the importance of education to communities that could not easily support large centralized institutions.
Several schools were associated with Cana and its surrounding settlements, including Brushy Fork, Lovills Creek, Rocky Ford, Mount Bethel, Saint Paul, Sandy Ridge, and Wards Gap. The historical school directory identifies Brushy Fork School as having been constructed in 1910, while Sandy Ridge School received its first classroom in 1912 and a second in 1917.
The directory also identifies West Liberty School, associated with the Lambsburg and Cana region, as having been built in 1912.
These buildings reflected the practical circumstances of mountain education. Schools were located where families could reasonably reach them, and the number of students attending a particular classroom depended heavily on the surrounding population and local transportation conditions.
The historical school census collection explains that some families alternated their children’s attendance because farm labor and household responsibilities limited the time they could spend away from home. Such circumstances illustrate the close relationship between education and agricultural life in Carroll County, where children often contributed directly to the work necessary to support their households.
Original teachers’ term reports from 1918, 1922, and later years provide additional evidence about the county’s schools, including information about teachers, enrollment, and classroom organization. Taken together, these records preserve details about a system that eventually disappeared as school consolidation and improved transportation changed the educational landscape.
The Story of Saint Paul School
Among Cana’s educational institutions, Saint Paul School has a particularly well-documented history.
According to the school’s official historical account, the institution was founded by Jake Wiseler, a minister associated with Saint Paul Church of the Brethren. The school and church were named in remembrance of a congregation in Pennsylvania where Wiseler had previously worshipped.
The original school occupied a log building, but as educational needs changed, students moved to a dwelling that also served as the Cana Post Office. This arrangement illustrates the flexible use of buildings in rural communities, where a single structure could provide several essential services.
A later school building was constructed but burned approximately seven years afterward. Classes subsequently met in the home of Alfred Towe before moving into another house provided by Lum Jones, which remained in use until the fall of 1921.
That year, F. Huston Towe donated an acre of land to the Carroll County School Board for a more permanent school building. J. Fulton Towe became the first teacher in the new facility, continuing an educational tradition that had already survived several changes of location.
By the middle of the twentieth century, however, the county’s system of small neighborhood schools was undergoing a significant transformation.
In 1951, Brushy Fork, Flint Hill, Lovills Creek, Oak Grove, Sandy Ridge, and Saint Paul were consolidated to form Saint Paul Elementary School. Nile Smythers of Woodlawn served as its first principal, and the school initially enrolled 352 students in grades one through seven.
The consolidation represented a major turning point for education in Cana. Instead of attending numerous small schools distributed throughout the countryside, children from several communities increasingly received their education through a shared institution.
Although the change brought families together under a centralized school system, it also marked the gradual disappearance of the neighborhood schoolhouses that had served earlier generations.
The history of Saint Paul School preserves more than the development of a single institution. Its movement from a log cabin to a post office dwelling, private homes, and eventually a consolidated school reflects the determination of local families to maintain educational opportunities despite fires, limited facilities, and changing circumstances.
Apple Orchards and the Agricultural Economy
Agriculture remained one of the defining features of Cana’s economy, particularly the cultivation of apples in the hills and valleys of southern Carroll County.
The region’s orchards formed part of a larger fruit-growing economy extending across Carroll and Patrick counties in Virginia and into neighboring North Carolina. Farming families depended on seasonal harvests, while the ability to market their produce required transportation connections and buyers willing to handle crops grown by numerous individual producers.
As commercial agriculture expanded during the twentieth century, apple growers faced a familiar problem. Individual orchards might produce substantial quantities of fruit, but arranging efficient grading, packing, and shipment could be difficult without facilities capable of handling the combined harvests of multiple farms.
The creation of the Cana Fruit Growers Cooperative in 1967 represented an attempt to address that problem.
According to a contemporary report by Paul Dellinger in The Roanoke Times, a group of Carroll County apple growers obtained a $250,000 low-interest loan from the Farmers Home Administration to establish the cooperative. The money supported construction of a 20,000-square-foot metal building near the Virginia and North Carolina border and the purchase of equipment for grading and packing apples.
The facility allowed growers to combine their harvests and attract larger commercial shipments than many could have arranged independently. Apples arrived from Carroll and Patrick counties, along with neighboring communities in North Carolina, before being graded, packed, and transported to markets beyond the region.
The cooperative charged growers for the apples processed through its equipment, but its central purpose was to provide an efficient means of marketing fruit rather than to operate as a conventional profit-seeking business.
For a time, the arrangement proved successful. Apples were shipped to distant markets, including international destinations, while commercial trucks arrived to carry large quantities of fruit away from Cana.
The cooperative became an important part of the local agricultural economy, demonstrating how independent farms could work together to overcome the difficulties of marketing crops from a rural mountain community.
The Decline of the Cana Fruit Growers Cooperative
By the late 1980s, however, the cooperative was struggling with financial difficulties that threatened its continued operation.
Dellinger’s May 7, 1990, report described an organization burdened by debt after several difficult growing seasons. The cooperative had already experienced financial problems during the middle of the decade, forcing it to restructure its original loan.
Weather conditions subsequently made the situation worse.
Hailstorms damaged apple crops, and Hurricane Hugo brought additional destruction in 1989. Growers who might otherwise have supplied the packing facility with marketable fruit suffered substantial losses, leaving the cooperative without the volume of apples necessary to meet its financial obligations.
By the spring of 1990, cooperative officials were warning that the organization might be forced to close.
Eldridge Boyd, one of the trustees, described how the combined effects of storms and poor harvests had damaged the growers’ ability to make payments. Dennis McMillan, the cooperative’s secretary-treasurer, recalled that successful seasons could require workers to remain at the packing facility well into the night loading trucks.
McMillan estimated that the operation could handle approximately 50,000 to 75,000 bushels in a favorable season. Such quantities demonstrated why the cooperative had been valuable, but they also revealed how dependent the business was on reliable harvests.
By 1990, approximately $130,000 remained outstanding on the cooperative’s debt. Officials had attempted to secure another restructuring agreement, but federal lending regulations prevented the arrangement they sought.
Cooperative president Ray Fleming acknowledged that the immediate loss of the packing facility might be less noticeable during a poor harvest. Its absence would become much more significant, however, when the orchards produced enough apples to require the large-scale services it had provided.
The newspaper reported that the cooperative’s facilities were expected to be sold at public auction, although a final sale date had not been established at the time of publication.
The decline of the Cana Fruit Growers Cooperative reflected the vulnerability of agricultural businesses whose survival depended on weather, crop quality, transportation, and financing. It also represented the threatened loss of an institution that growers had established to serve their community collectively.
Its history provides one of the clearest surviving examples of Cana’s twentieth-century economic importance beyond the immediate boundaries of Carroll County.
The Tire-Dump Fire of May 1990
Only days after the newspaper reported the cooperative’s financial difficulties, another event brought Cana into regional headlines.
During the night of May 11 and the following day, May 12, 1990, a large fire broke out at an old tire dump south of Cana, near U.S. Route 52 and the North Carolina border.
According to The Roanoke Times on May 13, firefighters initially received information suggesting that a building was burning. Upon arriving at the location, however, emergency crews discovered that the fire involved a large accumulation of discarded tires.
The burning material produced thick black smoke, raising immediate concerns about nearby residents and the potential dangers associated with the fire.
Authorities evacuated people within approximately half a mile of the location, while heavy smoke forced officials to close part of U.S. Route 52. Emergency crews from both Virginia and North Carolina responded, demonstrating the importance of cooperation between departments operating on opposite sides of the state line.
Cana Fire Chief M. C. Marsh reported that the blaze appeared to have been deliberately started, although the newspaper account did not establish a definitive cause.
The fire also raised concerns about possible environmental damage. Lovill’s Creek, which contributed to Mount Airy’s water supply, flowed near the dump, and emergency workers worried that runoff from the burning material could threaten the creek. Reports that old drums might have been discarded among the tires added to the uncertainty surrounding the contents of the site.
Eight fire departments participated in the response, including Cana and Hillsville departments and additional crews from North Carolina. Firefighters worked for approximately fifteen hours to bring the blaze under control.
Doyle Montgomery of the Cana Volunteer Fire Department was hospitalized after suffering smoke inhalation and chest pains, while several other firefighters received treatment either at the scene or at a nearby hospital.
Carroll County officials declared the incident a disaster to assist with obtaining reimbursement for emergency materials and equipment used during the response.
Although the blaze was eventually controlled, the incident demonstrated how closely Cana’s public safety concerns were connected with neighboring communities. A fire in southern Carroll County could threaten homes, transportation, and water resources extending well beyond Virginia’s border.
Cana Residents and Military Service
The history of Cana also extends beyond its farms, schools, and churches through the military service of residents who participated in conflicts overseas.
One particularly well-documented example is Clyde Easter, who grew up in Cana before serving in the United States Army during World War II.
In a September 3, 1996, article for The Roanoke Times, reporter Greg Edwards described Easter’s experiences during the Allied campaign in Italy and his eventual return to the battlefield where he had been wounded more than fifty years earlier.
Easter was only eighteen years old when he joined Company A of the 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, shortly before the Allied landings at Anzio in January 1944.
The campaign became a prolonged and costly struggle as Allied soldiers fought to break through German positions and advance toward Rome. Easter suffered his first wound on March 24, when a machine gun bullet struck his hand.
He returned to combat but was wounded again on May 25, when shell fragments struck his face during the Allied breakout from the Anzio beachhead.
After recovering from his injuries, Easter served with a supply unit in Naples before eventually returning to the United States.
His connection with the Italian battlefield continued long after the war. Easter revisited Anzio in 1985 and again during the fiftieth anniversary commemorations in 1994, but disagreements over the participation of veterans in official memorial ceremonies became a matter of personal concern.
In May 1996, he returned to Italy as a featured speaker at Memorial Day ceremonies held at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, where thousands of American servicemen were buried.
Easter’s experience connected a young man from rural Carroll County with one of the major campaigns of World War II. His later involvement in remembrance ceremonies also demonstrated how the experiences of mountain residents became part of the wider national effort to preserve the memory of military service.
Local cemetery records preserve additional evidence of Cana residents who served in the armed forces, including military inscriptions identifying veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.
Churches, Cemeteries, and the Preservation of Family History
Beyond the larger events documented in church histories and newspapers, much of Cana’s past remains preserved in cemeteries scattered throughout the surrounding countryside.
The Cana Baptist Church Cemetery, Cana Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, Rocky Ford Christian Church Cemetery, Oak Ridge Baptist Church Cemetery, and other local burial grounds contain records of families whose lives extended across several generations.
Surveys published by New River Notes, including work conducted by Buford C. Wilson and Mildred J. Wilson, provide transcriptions of gravestone inscriptions and additional genealogical information. These records identify numerous surnames associated with the Cana region, including Easter, McCreary, Edwards, Dawson, Brannock, Hawks, Ayers, and many others.
The cemetery surveys also reveal how deeply religious institutions were woven into the landscape. Churches often maintained burial grounds serving neighboring families, creating places where generations of local history could be preserved even after nearby homes and schools disappeared.
Military inscriptions, family relationships, and dates recorded on gravestones provide valuable evidence about individual lives. Where additional biographical information appears in cemetery transcriptions, however, it must be evaluated alongside original records, since genealogical notes are not always taken directly from the stones themselves.
The Carroll County Historical Society has also contributed to the preservation of this local history through its publication, Carroll County Chronicles. Among the subjects identified in its historical index are early churches, family histories, community schools, cemeteries, and an account of a Cana woman licensed as a midwife in Virginia in 1929.
Such subjects provide a reminder that the history of Cana cannot be understood through major events alone. The work of teachers, ministers, farmers, midwives, veterans, and other residents shaped the daily life of the community, even when their individual experiences attracted little attention beyond the surrounding mountains.
The courthouse records, church registers, old newspapers, family Bibles, school reports, and cemetery inscriptions preserved by regional historical organizations collectively offer opportunities to reconstruct those experiences.
Cana’s Place in Appalachian History
Cana’s history illustrates the development of a southern Appalachian community whose institutions emerged gradually from the needs of the families living there.
The establishment of Mount Bethel Moravian Church in 1852 reflected the willingness of mountain residents and visiting missionaries to maintain religious connections despite long distances and difficult travel. The expansion of postal service in 1904 demonstrated how rural communities became increasingly connected with national communication networks, while the development and eventual consolidation of local schools revealed the changing expectations surrounding education.
Agriculture remained central to the area’s economy, and the Cana Fruit Growers Cooperative showed how orchardists attempted to organize themselves for participation in larger commercial markets. Its financial difficulties during the late 1980s also illustrated the challenges faced by farmers whose livelihoods depended on unpredictable harvests and economic conditions beyond their control.
The tire-dump fire of 1990 and the military experiences of residents such as Clyde Easter provide additional dimensions to the community’s history, connecting a seemingly quiet mountain settlement with regional emergencies and international events.
Yet much of Cana’s significance lies in the continuity of its institutions and families rather than in any single episode.
Old church histories preserve the names of missionaries who traveled through the mountains before improved highways existed. School records identify buildings where children received their education before consolidation brought neighboring districts together. Cemetery inscriptions document the generations who worked the surrounding farms, raised families, served in wars, and remained connected to the community throughout their lives.
The most important questions concerning Cana’s earliest settlement, including the precise origin of its name, still invite further research through original postal applications, deeds, and nineteenth-century records.
Nevertheless, the surviving historical evidence establishes Cana as far more than an unincorporated settlement along the Virginia and North Carolina state line. Its story belongs to the wider history of Appalachia, where communities developed through agriculture, faith, education, cooperation, and the persistent efforts of residents to maintain a sense of place across generations.
Today, the roads crossing southern Carroll County continue to connect the mountains with the Piedmont below, while the churches, cemeteries, schools, and remaining agricultural landscape preserve reminders of the people who built and sustained Cana.
Sources & Further Reading
Moravian Archives. “Mount Bethel Moravian Church.” Moravian Archives, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. https://moravianarchives.org/congregations/mount-bethel-moravian-church/
Moravian Archives. “Crooked Oak Moravian Church.” Moravian Archives, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. https://moravianarchives.org/congregations/crooked-oak-moravian-church/
Moravian Church Southern Province. “A Brief History of the Moravian Church Southern Province.” May 2018. https://www.moravian.org/southern/2018/05/a-brief-history-of-the-moravian-church-southern-province/
Virginia Council of Churches. “Moravian Church in North America.” https://vacouncilofchurches.org/about-vcc/resources/moravian-church-in-north-america/
Carroll County Public Schools. “About SPS.” St. Paul School, Cana, Virginia. https://www.sps.ccpsd.k12.va.us/en-US/about-sps-0dd8e761
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “Carroll County Historical Schools.” Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/school-list.html
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “Carroll School List.” Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/carroll-school-list.html
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “School Census.” Historical school census records, beginning in 1890. Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/school-census.html
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “Teachers’ Term Reports.” Historical school records, 1918–1961 and later. Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/teachers-term-reports.html
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “Road Maps: Carroll County.” Historical road maps, 1932–2017. Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/road-maps—carroll.html
Carroll County Heritage Digitizing Organization. “Newspapers.” Historical Carroll County newspaper collection, 1873 onward. Carroll County Virginia Digital History. https://www.ccva.digital/newspapers.html
United States Postal Service. “Virginia: Dates That First Rural Routes Were Established at Post Offices, through 1904.” Postal history records. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/first-rfd-virginia.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Records.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices
Library of Virginia. “Carroll County Microfilm.” County court, property, marriage, school, and other historical records beginning in 1842. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA053
Library of Virginia. “County and City Formations and Records Availability: Campbell through Cumberland County.” https://old.lva.virginia.gov/WHATWEHAVE/local/county_formation/locality_listingC.htm
Dellinger, Paul. “Fruit Co-op in Carroll to Close.” The Roanoke Times, May 7, 1990, A3. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1990/rt9005/900507/05070146.htm
“Tire-Dump Fire Forces Carroll Evacuations.” The Roanoke Times, May 13, 1990, B6. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1990/rt9005/900513/05130266.htm
Edwards, Greg. “Area Man Was Featured Speaker in Remembrance of Anzio Battle.” The Roanoke Times, September 3, 1996, C1. https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1996/rt9609/960903/09030103.htm
Carroll County Historical Society and Museum. “Carroll County Chronicles.” Historical journal and index of publications, 1982–2012. https://carrollvamuseum.org/museum/news/carroll-county-chronicles/
Wilson, Buford C., and Mildred J. Wilson. “Cana Baptist Church Cemetery.” Surveyed April 24, 2010. New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/cana-baptist-church-cemetery/
Wilson, Buford C., and Mildred J. Wilson. “Cana Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.” Surveyed April 24, 2010. New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/cana-primitive-baptist-church-cemetery/
Wilson, Buford C. “Oak Ridge Baptist Church Cemetery.” Surveyed October 14, 2013. New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/oak-ridge-baptist-church-cemetery/
Wilson, Buford C. “Rocky Ford Christian Church Cemetery.” Surveyed October 30, 2013. New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/rocky-ford-christian-church-cemetery/
Wilson, Buford C. “Sandy Ridge Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.” Surveyed October 3, 2013. New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/sandy-ridge-primitive-baptist-church-cemetery/
New River Notes. “Cemetery Index: Carroll County, Virginia.” https://www.newrivernotes.com/cemetery-index-carroll-county-virginia/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Author Note: Cana’s history reflects generations of families whose churches, schools, farms, and traditions helped shape this community along the Virginia and North Carolina border. If you have photographs, historical documents, family stories, or additional information about Cana, I welcome your contributions to help preserve and expand the historical record.