Sugar Grove, Montgomery County, Virginia

Sugar Grove is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States. Sugar Grove is part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg–Radford Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Montgomery County, Virginia and the city of Radford. It is a lesser known community that predates both better known communities in Virginia and West Virginia by the same name. Sugar Grove at one time hosted a school, a post office, two stores, a vegetable canning facility, and a little less than one hundred families.

In modern times, the boundaries of Sugar Grove are generally agreed to be primarily the intersection of Bow Hill Road, Sugar Grove Road, and Elliots Creek Road. Craigs Mountain Road (VA 674) is the only way into Sugar Grove. From Pilot Road (VA 615) to the end of state maintenance on Bow Hill Road, it is approximately six miles, three and one half of those miles being a gravel road.

Sugar Grove is an often neglected community of Montgomery County, Virginia. It took an outpouring of the community at a Board of Supervisors meeting in 1998 and 1999 to get the Virginia Department of Transportation to pave the worst one and one-half miles of road that contained at least one-half miles of one hundred foot drop-offs with no guard rail and no room to pass.

On Bow Hill Road, residents were forced to drive through a creek three times to the end of the state maintained road until a local news station (WSLS) profiled the road in 2000. Of course, state law prevented school buses from crossing live water so school bus service did not arrive to the end of Bow Hill Road until after the news story gave the plight wide coverage.

The current residents of Sugar Grove represent a wide range of people, those with college educations and advanced degrees to those who have no education beyond elementary school. There are college professors, nurses, construction workers, and retirees residing in Sugar Grove. There is a surprising amount of community cohesiveness considering the diversity of education, culture, lifestyle, and income level.

There are a few commercial enterprises based in Sugar Grove ranging from computer consultants to a full time taxidermist. Also, agricultural activity centers on timber harvesting and firewood suppliers.

Fortunately, for residents of Sugar Grove, development pressure is limited due to the topography. With the headwaters of the Roanoke River in Dry Run and Elliots Creek and steep Pilot Mountain to the south, there are very few pieces of flat land, with most land being on the slopes of the mountain and the remaining land forming flood plains of the creeks.

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