Notes from the Southwest Virginia Hot Dog Trail

The big city hot dogs of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia get most of the media attention, but the small towns and country backroads of Southwest Virginia are rich in hot dog cuisine.

Skeeter’s

165 East Main Street • Wytheville, Virginia

Skeeter’s in downtown Wytheville is a blue-collar hot dog joint, but its lineage is old Virginia aristocracy. A future American First Lady was born upstairs. 

Skeeter’s claims to have sold over 9 million hot dogs. And those hot dogs are red. Bright red. The restaurant occupies a corner spot on the town’s Main Street, Highway 11. Passion for red hot dogs runs high along the Southwest Virginia section of this historic route, connecting back to a time when those hot dogs were made at the Valleydale plant on Commonwealth Avenue in Bristol. As I once pointed out to a Valleydale executive, long after Smithfield Foods had purchased the company and closed the Bristol facility, those red hot dogs are cheaper than the bun you put them in. They helped countless families in Appalachia get through hard times.

That hardscrabble hot dog history makes the setting of Skeeter’s all the more fascinating. On October 14, 1872, Edith Bolling was born to the family of a prominent judge, in the building that would become E.N. Unberger’s Store and, later, Skeeter’s, named for Unberger’s son. Edith would bring the world’s attention to Wytheville. In 1915, she married President Woodrow Wilson. Just four years into their marriage, Wilson suffered a stroke, and Edith managed his affairs during his convalescence. Citizens of Wytheville still refer to her as the “Secret President” and “The First Woman President.” 

Adjacent to Skeeter’s is the First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson Museum, and across the street sits the Bolling Wilson Hotel, originally built in 1927 as the George Wythe Hotel. A red hot dog lunch at Skeeter’s puts you right in the middle of all that history.

Hi-Way Drive-In, the Dip Dog Stand

2051 Lee Highway • Marion, Virginia

A drive south on Route 11, the Lee Highway, through Smyth County reveals another red hot dog temple. The sign in the back of the parking lot announces the legal name of the business, but few people call it by its official designation, the Hi-Way Drive-In.  To most folks, it’s the Dip Dog Stand. Half a million of the battered dogs are sold yearly. The business turns 60 this year. 

Co-owner Grant Hall says the restaurant held on despite the fact that it is in the worst possible location. The opening of Interstate 81 in 1963 killed many businesses along Lee Highway, but the Dip Dog survived. 

Grant’s wife Pam points out that a Dip Dog is not a corn dog. For a Dip Dog, classic red hot dogs are speared on wooden sticks, dipped into a special secret batter, deep-fried, and rolled in mustard. That same batter swathes the restaurant’s onion rings, served in quantities of 10 or 12 in brown, grease-stained bags. In a typical week, 500 pounds of onions are peeled, battered, and fried. On Friday nights, the parking lot is so full that diners often have trouble picking up carryout orders. The mustard-painted Dip Dog is an inexpensive indulgence and a symbol of permanence and stability on the ever-changing Lee Highway.

Buck’s Drive-In

1212 East Main Street • Saltville, Virginia

Over in Saltville, Virginia, the hot dogs aren’t red, but they’ve been served at Buck’s Drive-In for almost as long as Dip Dogs have been around. Located just outside town, on the banks of the North Fork of the Holston River, Buck’s has no numbered or lined parking spaces. Cars pull onto the lot and park at chaotic, random angles. It’s a walk-up-and-order business, with three picnic tables. Order numbers are announced over a loudspeaker. 

Buck’s has been in the Maiden family since 1961. The recipes for the drive-in’s homemade chili and coleslaw haven’t changed at all over that long history. And Buck’s specializes in an increasingly rare commodity in 21st century America, the foot-long hot dog.

Teddy’s

11804 Highway 71 • Nickelsville, Virginia

In Scott County, Virginia, we found a mayonnaise microclimate. Order a hot dog at Teddy’s in Nickelsville, don’t specify condiments, and it’ll come with mayonnaise. Says owner Trish Kilgore, “I prefer mustard, but most people eat mayonnaise on their hot dogs around here.”

Corner Dog House

102 East Mary Street • Bristol, Virginia

The mid-20th-century Southwest Virginia hot dog boom continued when Bristol’s Corner Dog House opened in 1963. It, too, has never changed location. Its loyalty to the Valleydale red hot dog has been constant in the town where they were once made. 

The chili recipe hasn’t changed either. Betty Brown, who owned the restaurant for about 40 years, recalled the time when a Bristol policeman suggested adding some bread to the chili. She adopted the frugal practice. Another tradition that has persisted is closing on Sunday. The Corner Dog House sits across from the Lee Street Baptist Church. 

“We were going to open on Sundays one time, but the pastor came down and talked to my husband Joe,” Betty said. “The pastor said if we opened on Sundays, kids would come down here and spend their money on hot dogs instead of putting it in the collection plate.”

Ballpark Corner Market

603 Randolph Street • Bristol, Virginia

The last stop on our Southwest Virginia hot dog trail is also in Bristol. It combines two American hallmarks, baseball and hot dogs. Ballpark Corner Market is in an ideal location, directly across the street from Fred T. Bowman Field. During baseball season, the market’s sales can top 4,000 hot dogs in a week. 

Employee Brandy Jordan is in constant motion, chopping onions in the back as hot-dog-crazed baseball fans mob the place in the summertime. And the market is ideally located for another reason. When supplies of hot dogs and chili run low, employees only have to take a short walk across Randolph Street for restocking at Malcolm’s Meat Service, in business since 1949.

Devotion to daily labor defines these Southwest Virginia hot dog businesses. Making a living by selling a food product priced at less than two dollars dictates unending hours on the feet. These places have withstood cyclical fads and food vagaries, wild diets and economic downturns. 

Their owners and staff have made a respectable living for themselves and their families while creating friendly havens for their customers, who gather gratefully around the humble hot dog.

About the author: Fred Sauceman’s forthcoming book is The Proffitts of Ridgewood: An Appalachian Family’s Life in Barbecue.