Street Scene looking North

Street Scene looking north along Main Street in Woodstock. 

This photograph, taken from Court Square, shows North Main Street in Woodstock sometime in the 1960s. During this period the number of cars on Route 11 facilitated the operation of numerous downtown businesses, especially restaurants. Among these were the Shenandoah Restaurant pictured on the right and Walton and Smoot Drug store which also operated a lunch and soda fountain. However, this amount of traffic was also extremely dangerous and over 20 fatal vehicle crashes were reported in the county each years during the 1950s and 1960s.

All but two buildings in this photograph are still standing. The large, three story, wooden structure at left was referred to as the MacGruder building. It held a mercantile store, dental office, print shop, and eventually Walton and Smoot Drugs store. A two store brick office building replaced it in 1968. On the right, the structure with the large porch was the Richey building which housed a hardware store and the Woodstock print shop until it was destroyed by fire in 1982.