Damascus has long been home to respected keepers of musical traditions, including blind balladeer Horton Barker, who sang at the White House for President and Mrs. Roosevelt in the 1930s; Walter "Sparkplug" Hughes, a member of The Hill Billies, the traveling vaudeville and radio band that gave its name to hillbilly music; renowned composer, fiddler, and singer G. B. Grayson, who performed on the streets; and string band musicians Herbert and Earl Sweet, the Sweet Brothers, who were active here in the 1920s and 1930s. Together they left an important legacy of music in Damascus. Affectionately known as "Trail Town U.S.A.," Damascus is a crossroads of more than six trails and a gateway to the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. Every spring, Trail Days draws people from across the globe for the hikers' parade, music, crafts, food, and hometown hospitality. The town also offers fishing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, and camping, and the Creeper Trail includes a seventeen-mile section from near the North Carolina state line to Damascus that passes through forests, alongside mountain streams, over rail trestles, and through livestock pastures. Damascus is also part of The Crooked Road, Virginia's Heritage Music Trail, in a region of southwest Virginia where musical traditions were preserved through families and communities and where old time mountain music, bluegrass, and gospel continue in venues, festivals, concerts, radio shows, and jam sessions across the Appalachian Mountains.