Journey on the James

Three Weeks through the Heart of Virginia

Earl Swift

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780813920214
• eBook ISBN: 9780813937212
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

From its beginnings as a trickle of icy water in Virginia's northwest corner to its miles-wide mouth at Hampton Roads, the James River has witnessed more recorded history than any other feature of the American landscape -- as home to the continent's first successful English settlement, highway for Native Americans and early colonists, battleground in the Revolution and the Civil War, and birthplace of America's twentieth-century navy.

In 1998, restless in his job as a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Earl Swift landed an assignment traveling the entire length of the James. He hadn't been in a canoe since his days as a Boy Scout, and he knew that the river boasts whitewater, not to mention man-made obstacles, to challenge even experienced paddlers. But reinforced by Pilot photographer Ian Martin and a lot of freeze-dried food and beer, Swift set out to immerse himself -- he hoped not literally -- in the river and its history.

What Swift survived to bring us is this engrossing chronicle of three weeks in a fourteen-foot plastic canoe and four hundred years in the life of Virginia. Fueled by humor and a dauntless curiosity about the land, buildings, and people on the banks, and anchored by his sidekick Martin -- whose photographs accompany the text -- Swift points his bow through the ghosts of a frontier past, past Confederate forts and POW camps, antebellum mills, ruined canals, vanished towns, and effluent-spewing industry. Along the banks, lonely meadowlands alternate with suburbs and power plants, marinas and the gleaming skyscrapers of Richmond's New South downtown. Enduring dunkings, wolf spiders, near-arrest, channel fever, and twenty-knot winds, Swift makes it to the Chesapeake Bay.

Readers who accompany him through his Journey on the James will come away with the accumulated pleasure, if not the bruises and mud, of four hundred miles of adventure and history in the life of one of America's great watersheds.

NOTES

Journey on the James is based on a twenty-two-part series of the same name published in the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Virginia, from Sunday, September 13 to Sunday, October 5, 1998. The series was “live,” meaning that it appeared in the paper as I wrote it and Ian photographed it. This approach made for a rather breakneck pace on the water and long evenings spent, exhausted, in front of our laptop computers, often at picnic tables in camp. It also translated into a series that bears little resemblance, beyond basic organization, to this book: the physical confines of the newspaper and the scarcity of free time we had for research restricted us to shorthand references to the history, geology, and wildlife around us. What follows, then, are references to the sources that contribute to the parts of the book not contained in the series, as well as notes on features of our journey that I think deserve further explanation.

ABBREVIATIONS

HCV	Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia
HV	Robert R. Howison, A History of Virginia, from its Discovery and Settlement to the Present Time
LS	Norfolk Ledger-Star
VMHB	Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
VP	Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
VPLS	Norfolk Virginian-Pilot & Ledger-Star

DAY ONE (AT THE HEVENER FARM)

The bulk of this chapter was gleaned from Ian’s and my visit to Jacob Hevener’s Dividing Waters Farm in Hightown on Wednesday, September 9, 1998. We decided to follow the Jackson, rather than the James’s other source streams—most notably, the Cowpasture—on the basis of a reconnaissance trip I made to the area on June 24–26, 1998, during which I concluded that if one likens the James’s headwaters to a tree, the Jackson is its trunk, the other streams mere branches. I located the barn on this earlier trip, using the U.S. Geological Survey’s 7.5–minute Hightown quadrangle map. It clearly depicts the building flanked by both the Jackson and Potomac. During the recon I also visited the Highland County Library in Monterey, where librarian Pat Shields suggested I contact a local canoeist, John Sweet, for advice on how best to travel the Jackson’s upper reaches. I was able to reach him via E-mail; he gave me Hevener’s name and phone number, and I arranged the journey’s start with the farmer by phone.

General background on the farm’s environs can be found in Oren F. Morton, A History of Highland County, Virginia (1911; reprint, Baltimore: Regional Publishing Co., 1969); and Raymond S. Edmundson, “The Valley and Ridge Province,” The James River Basin, Past, Present and Future (Richmond: Virginia Academy of Science, 1950). I also relied, as I did throughout the journey, on Henry Howe’s wonderful Historical Collections of Virginia (Charleston, SC: Babcock & Co., 1845; abbreviated HCV), a county-by-county snapshot of Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century; and on Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1940), compiled almost a century later by writers employed by the Work Projects Administration.

DAY 2 (THE HEVENER FARM TO THE U.S. ROUTE 220 BRIDGE)

Most of this chapter is based on our explorations in Highland and Bath counties on September 9 and 10, 1998. Otherwise:

9–10. My description of the Valley and Ridge district relies in part on articles by Charles F. Lane and Edgar Bingham in The Virginia Geographer, the journal of the Virginia Geographic Society. Lane’s, titled “Physiographic Provinces of Virginia,” appeared in Volume 15, Number 2 (fall-winter 1983); Bingham’s, titled almost identically “The Physiographic Provinces of Virginia,” was published in Volume 23, Number 2 (fall-winter 1991). I also relied on Raymond S. Edmundson’s “The Valley and Ridge Province” and Marcellus H. Stow’s “Geology” in The James River Basin.

12. The reference to John Vanderpool comes from Morton, History of Highland County.

13. The turnpike reference is from Morton. Ian and I learned of the presence of Mackey Spring and the Blue Hole in a piece of small-world serendipity. I was striding south on 220 when a station wagon headed the same way slowed and a thin, middle-aged guy stuck his head out of the window. “Do you need a hand?” he asked. I assured him I was fine, and he sped off. A half hour later I passed him on the roadside, where he had been fixing a flat on his wife’s car. He again asked whether I needed help; I again told him I did’t. We got to talking, and he introduced himself: it was John Sweet, the Highland County canoeist who gave me Jacob Hevener’s name and advised me, quite accurately, that the upper Jackson is nearly empty of water in the early fall. John then consulted our maps, and showed us where we could find the springs.

15. The description of the Bolar spring is from Morton.

16. Material on Bath County’s resort past draws from HCV; E. Lee Shepard, ed., “Trip to the Virginia Springs: An Extract from the Diary of Blair Bolling, 1838,” VMHB 96, no. 2 (April 1981); Perceval Reniers, The Springs of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941); and Fay Ingalls, The Valley Road (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1949). The bathhouse’s age is from Calder Loth, ed., The Virginia Landmarks Register (Charlottesville: Virginia Department of Historic Resources/University Press of Virginia, 1999). Jefferson’s remarks are from his Notes on the State of Virginia (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1955).

18. The history of Warwickton and Hidden Valley relies on The Virginia Landmarks Register; interviews with the Stidhams; materials supplied on-site by the U.S. Forest Service; and W. Roy Wheeler, ed., Historic Virginia (Charlottesville: Roy Wheeler Co., n.d.).

DAY 3 (U.S. ROUTE 220 TO STATE ROUTE 39)

Most of the chapter is based on our hike through Little Mountain Gorge and my disastrous inner tube voyage, both on September 11, 1998. Otherwise:

22. Information on Forts Dinwiddie and Young draws on Louis K. Koontz, The Virginia Frontier, 1754–1763 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1925); on interviews with Harry Jaeger, president of the Archeological Society of Virginia, and Howard A. MacCord, the retired state archaeologist, in early June 1999; and on MacCord’s “Fort Dinwiddie Site,” Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Virginia 27, no. 3 (March 1973).

The Indians’ use of the neighborhood as hunting grounds is related in Morton, History of Highland County, and Oren F. Morton, Annals of Bath County, Virginia (Staunton, VA: McClure Co., 1917). The quotation is from Robert R. Howison, A History of Virginia, from its Discovery and Settlement to the Present Time, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1846; abbreviated HV).

22–23. The war’s beginnings are detailed in Louis Knott Koontz, “Washington on the Frontier,” VMHB 36, no. 4 (October 1928); and Koontz, Virginia Frontier. Details on the French situation and the Indians’ ferocity can be found in Matthew C. Ward, “Fighting the ‘Old Women’: Indian Strategy on the Virginia and Pennsylvania Frontier, 1754–1758,” VMHB 103, no. 3 (July 1995).

23. The firsthand description is from Nicholas Cresswell, who met four Shawnee chiefs in December 1774. He’s quoted by Joseph C. Jefferds in Captain Matthew Arbuckle (Charleston, WV: Education Foundation Inc., 1981).

Material on Braddock’s defeat can be found in HCV and HV; Washington’s quote is from HCV, as is the reference to Thomas Fausett.

24. Description of the dig is from my interview with MacCord, and from his “Fort Dinwiddie Site.”

25. The quote is from John A. Stuart’s Memoir of Indian Wars, and Other Occurrences (New York: The New York Times & Arno Press, 1971). Stuart was a Greenbrier settler who rose to colonel in the colonial militia and fought at Point Pleasant. The slim volume contains his firsthand, fast-moving account of violence between whites and natives in Virginia’s western counties.

The description of the three types of fort is from Koontz, Virginia Frontier. The garrisons’ lack of fortitude is ibid., and from Koontz, “Washington on the Frontier.”

DAY 4 (ROUTE 39 TO THE GATHRIGHT DAM)

Most of the observations in this chapter were made by Ian and me during our trip through Richardson Gorge and across Lake Moomaw on September 12, 1998. Otherwise:

28. Wilson’s description of Cornstalk is from Samuel G. Drake’s Indians of North America, as quoted in Robert Douthat Stoner’s history of Botetourt County, A Seed-Bed of the Republic (Roanoke: Roanoke Historical Society, 1962). Col. Wilson heard the chief speak at Camp Charlotte, where the Indians made peace with Dunmore following the Battle of Point Pleasant.

28–30. The quotes detailing the Muddy Creek and Clendenin homestead massacres are from Stuart’s Memoir of Indian Wars. Numerous other sources, among them Morton’s Annals of Bath County, detail the Kerr’s Creek killings. While pretty much all of them agree on the details, they vary in the dates of the attacks: I’ve seen them given as 1759 and 1763, 1761 and 1763, 1761 and 1765, etc. Further confusing things, a bronze marker mounted on a boulder at the shoulder of U.S. Route 60 at Big Spring insists the second attack occurred on October 10, 1764, ten years to the day before the Battle of Point Pleasant.

31–32. The origins of the Gathright project are detailed in the files maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District in Norfolk, Virginia; “Gathright Report March 20,” VP, March 13, 1964; George Taylor’s Associated Press report, “Controversial Dam Fiscally Feasible,” VP, March 21, 1964; John Koening Jr.’s AP report, VP, February 7, 1965; Koening, “Gathright Dam Need ‘Urgent,’” VP, April 28, 1966; Koening, “Gathright Dam Talk Returns to House” VP, May 1, 1966; Koening, “Several James Dams Possible,” VP, May 22, 1966; and Kenneth Bredemeier, “Gathright Dam: Boon or Boondoggle?” Washington Post, August 4, 1974.

32. The EPA’s remarks are drawn from “Comments by EPA Region III on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Gathright Lake, Virginia, prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District,” June 1972. I found a copy of this typewritten position paper in the Virginian-Pilot’s library, and numerous stories describing its contents: see Greg Glassner, “EPA Requests New Construction Stop on Gathright Dam Project,” LS, December 4, 1972; Gene Owens, “Ecologist Urges End to Gathright Project,” LS, December 29, 1972; “U.S. Urges Study of Halt in Dam Work,” Washington Post, December 30, 1972; and “Halt Gathright Dam, EPA Says,” VP, December 30, 1972.

34. Material on the dam’s purpose and construction can be found in Gene Owens, “Time Runs Out along Scenic Jackson River,” LS, October 23, 1972; “$18.8-Million Low Bid for Gathright Dam,” VP, December 15, 1972; and “Gathright Dam Workers, Bosses Celebrate Finish,” an Associated Press report in the May 26, 1978, LS. My characterization of Covington’s stance is from “Tide of Industries Foreseen for Dam,” an Associated Press report in the March 31, 1962, VP; Owens’s story of October 23, 1972; Bill Lumpkin’s AP report, “Covington Man Says Disputed Dam to Aid Environment,” VP, December 10, 1972; and Bredemeier’s Washington Post story of August 4, 1974.

A lengthy denunciation of multipurpose dams can be found in Elmer T. Peterson, Big Dam Foolishness (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954). The downs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Day One
• Day Two
• Day Three
• Day Four
• Day Five
• Day Six
• Day Seven
• Day Eight
• Day Nine
• Day Ten
• Day Eleven
• Day Twelve
• Day Thirteen
• Day Fourteen
• Day Fifteen
• Day Sixteen
• Day Seventeen
• Day Eighteen
• Day Nineteen
• Day Twenty
• Day Twenty-One
• Day Twenty-Two
• Notes
• Acknowledgments