page_title: Blacksburg, Virginia
section_title: Information age (1993–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Blacksburg, Virginia / History / Information age (1993–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: A park in downtown Blacksburg, Virginia
context_page_description: Blacksburg is an incorporated town in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 42,620 at the 2010 census. Blacksburg, as well as the surrounding county, is dominated economically and demographically by the presence of Virginia Tech.
  Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and the city of Radford are the three principal jurisdictions of the Blacksburg-Christiansburg Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses those jurisdictions and all of Montgomery, Pulaski, and Giles counties for statistical purposes. The MSA has an estimated population of 181,863 and is currently one of the faster-growing MSAs in Virginia.
  In 2011, BusinessWeek named Blacksburg as the "Best Place in the U.S. to Raise Kids". Also in 2011, readers of Southern Living named Blacksburg the "Best College Town in the South". Its public transportation system, Blacksburg Transit, which also connects to the neighboring town of Christiansburg, has repeatedly been recognized for the quality of its service. Blacksburg High School, which in 2013 opened a new building, is often ranked among the top schools of the nation for its academics.
context_section_description: Blacksburg is the site of the Blacksburg Electronic Village or BEV, conceived as a computer networking project of Virginia Tech in 1991 and officially born in 1993 as a way to link the town together using the Internet. This project quickly ushered the town into what is being called the Information Age.
  In 1994, Montgomery County Public Schools completed construction of Kipps Elementary School at 2801 Prices Fork Road. By this time, Blacksburg had five elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. A newly renovated Blacksburg branch library was opened in 1996.
  In the aftermath of railroad restructuring, many rail lines were abandoned. After 24 years of abandonment and six years of planning and construction, the first phase of the Huckleberry Trail built on the old Huckleberry railbed opened in 1996. The second phase of construction was completed in 1998. In 2019, the Blacksburg Rotary Mountain Bike Skills Park opened with funding from Blacksburg Parks and Recreation and donations.
  On July 8, 1997, ground was broken for the experimental "Smart Road" project. The second phase of construction was completed in 2002. The road is currently closed to the public and used as a research test bed for the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. A National Weather Service office is located in Blacksburg and serves most of southwestern Virginia, southeast West Virginia, and northwest North Carolina.
  In 2003, the new building for Blacksburg Middle School students opened on Prices Fork Road adjacent to the property housing Kipps Elementary School.
  On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 people dead and injured an additional 17 in the Virginia Tech shooting before committing suicide. The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting on a college campus since the Texas Clock Tower Massacre in 1966.
  On February 13, 2010, following a snowstorm that dropped two feet of snow on the area, the gymnasium roof on the previously occupied Blacksburg High School suffered a catastrophic structural failure and collapsed, causing structural damage to other areas of the school. The school building was condemned and students attended night school on a split schedule with the Blacksburg Middle School students at their school for the remainder of the year. It was determined that repair costs would exceed $18 million and would not be feasible given the age of the school; it was decided not to repair the building. Before the school year of 2013-14 Blacksburg High School was operating on a normal schedule out of the Blacksburg Middle School building on 3109 Prices Fork Road, and the middle schoolers were going to school in the old Christiansburg Middle School. The original Blacksburg High School building was vacant until it was demolished in the Summer of 2011. The newly constructed school building of Blacksburg High School which opened for the 2013 fall semester is located at 3401 Bruin Lane, behind the current Blacksburg Middle School and Bill Brown Football Stadium.
caption: Market Square Park, home of the Blacksburg Farmers Market since 2009
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