Front Royal was under the final rush of preparations Wednesday as the town readied to welcome King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Roads were closed, no-parking signs went up across the area and crews kept working in the rain before dawn to get the last details in place.
Crews had been battling the weather since 3:00 a.m. Wednesday, trying to finish ahead of a visit that was officially announced earlier in the week. By Wednesday afternoon, Front Royal had the feel of a ghost town, a sharp pause in a place that was about to turn into a magnet for crowds on Thursday.
For Larry Urgo, a lifelong Front Royal resident and the owner of AllClaimsPro, the buildup was hard to miss. He said there had been grumblings and rumors floating around before the announcement, but the Secret Service and other agencies did a really good job of keeping the visit under wraps. He said the town’s reaction has been shaped by the scale of the moment as much as by the logistics of it.
Front Royal is in Warren County, Virginia, and the visit has been framed locally as a major event for residents and businesses alike. Security was expected to be on high alert Thursday, with checkpoints and protection throughout the area as visitors were expected to crowd in for even a glimpse of the royal couple.
Urgo compared the moment to Bing Crosby’s visit to Front Royal in April 1950, saying longtime residents still talk about that day. “As somebody who’s lived here for a while, walking around and talking with other business owners, we always hear about the days when Bing Crosby came through Front Royal and how cool of an event that was and so it’s pretty cool to partake in our own right with a very influential and famous person coming through our main street,” he said.
For a town that spent Wednesday quiet and mostly empty, Thursday was set to bring the opposite: packed streets, tighter security and a brief turn at the center of attention. The question now is not whether Front Royal can handle the attention, but how long the afterglow lasts once the crowds leave.