On the second floor of an old downtown building in a rural Shenandoah Valley town, a piece of fading history is striving to live on.

To people who have never seen duckpin bowling before, they might find the softball-size bowling balls and the stout pins quirky. But for the folks who frequent Shenandoah Bowling Lanes in Mount Jackson, Va., “This is Duckpin Country.”

Shenandoah Bowling Lanes opened in 1948, an era when duckpin bowling was spreading from Maryland to many states in the East.