Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In that spirit, on a steamy August day, we've embarked on a journey along our own river of time to follow the subtle currents of history.
The New River has lent more than its name to our region of Western Virginia. It has been the most influential presence of all, from ancient geologic epochs to the dawning of the 21st century.
It has been a constant as generations of dwellers have used the river in a variety of ways to support their lives, including transportation, sustenance, industrialization and recreation.
Perhaps, as a result, we've come to take the perpetual New River for granted. That explains why Leslie Giles has come to guide this time-traveling expedition.
Earlier this year, Giles, who works for the state's Department of Historic Resources, discovered that there was no official historical inventory of the New River, no list of important sites, buildings or happenings.
So she began to assemble one. It's a painstaking process, involving the gathering of all sorts of data, but not without benefits, such as spending a day along the river.
"The more I see of the river, the more I'm impressed with it," Giles said.
We've decided to travel downstream, in the direction of the New River's contrary course. The rocky, shallow New flows northward, toward the continent's mountainous interior, the "wrong way" to be useful as an avenue for colonial settlers or river commerce, she noted.
Headed south across the New's lengthy bridge on Interstate 81, we look to our right, toward a "fish trap" formed when aborigines arranged large river rocks into a large "V," with the narrow funnel facing downstream.
Giles said the river and the rich soil of its floodplain amply supported a number of American Indian settlements in the past. Today their remnants - such as the extensive village unearthed 20 years ago as Radford developed Bisset Park - are a valuable lode for archaeologists.
More recently, the underground resources of the New River have been minerals such as zinc, iron, coal and copper. Those minerals bring us to our first two destinations: the Shot Tower at Jacksons Ferry and the ruins of an iron furnace at Barren Springs, both in Wythe County.
Lead for buttons and bullets was first mined at nearby Austinville in the 1750s and the activity continued throughout the American Revolution. The Shot Tower, where hot ingots were dropped down a 75-foot shaft to cool, was built in 1807. It is one of only three remaining in the United States, Giles noted.
At Barren Springs Furnace, built around 1854, local iron deposits were heated and refined by hot blasts of charcoal fuel. The furnace operated only 30 years, too far from major East Coast markets to be profitable, leaving behind only the impressively large stones of its stack.
The 57-mile-long New River Trail, located atop an abandoned railway that traces the riverbank, links these industrial sites and many others. Railroads reached the New River in the 1850s, drawing workers instead of homesteaders to the backcountry, Giles said.
Present literally drowned the past when Claytor Lake was created in Pulaski County by the construction of a hydroelectric dam about 60 years ago. The lake inundated Dunkard's Bottom, an 18th century settlement of Pennsylvania Germans.
Above the floodwater stands the Haven B. Howe house, the 1870s home of a well-to-do investor and farmer. Now headquarters of the Claytor Lake State Park, the brick house features native construction materials, an architecturally unusual wrought-iron front porch and a star-patterned gable window.
Did the electrical power and the recreational opportunities created by the lake justify destroying the settlement? "There's a great deal of information down on the river bottom," Giles says, also noting that the 60-year-old dam is old enough to be considered historic in its own right.
Anything older than a half-century is eligible for historic designation, so it's appropriate to think of the dam - and other long-time, significant industrial sites such as the Radford Army Ammunition Plant or the Hoescht-Celanese plant in Giles County - as having historic value, Giles said.
In Radford, layers of river-related history are apparent. The Wilderness Road, traveled by legions of pioneers, crossed the New River near Mary Draper Ingles' cabin. The story of her capture by Indians and escape is told here summer nights in the outdoor drama, "The Long Way Home." She is buried nearby in an unmarked grave located at the Ingles-Hale-Ingram cemetery, where old growth trees shield (and squeeze) ornate headstones.
William Haven, of a later generation, built a two-story log house on the old road on Radford's East End that still stands. But Radford didn't grow until about 50 years later, in the 1880s, when railroad connections to the Pocahontas coalfields made the small village boom.
Much of the architecture in Radford's West End dates from those prosperous days. Giles said the city has offered a tax break for fixing up old buildings, the only governmental financial incentive to preserve history she knows of along the New River in this area.
Farther downstream in Montgomery County sits Kentland, a former 19th century plantation that Giles calls "one of the region's most significant agricultural areas." The land is now owned by Virginia Tech and operated as a 1,750-acre farm. On site, the main house, built in 1834 and raided by Union troops during the Civil War, contains "some of the most refined architecture in the region."
Past the old riverside coal mining communities of Parrot and McCoy, through the water-eroded mountain gaps into Giles County, the tour moves to Eggleston, which Giles called a "sleepy crossroads community [with] a long and celebrated history as the site of several successive springs resorts." Once city-dwellers came here during the summer for the cool air and "healing' waters." Now there's no trace of the large hotel where they lodged.
At Pembroke, in the shadow of towering Castle Rock, the 1832 Snidow House watches over the river and the new highway department bridge on Virginia 623. The new bridge will replace a rickety iron truss structure that will be kept in pedestrian use.
Hard times during the Depression built the old high school in Narrows, the community situated where the river slices through lofty Peters Mountain. Federal works funds were used to construct the school here and several in other communities by the same architectural plan. Not many of the others still stand, Giles said.
That's where the day ended. It's remarkable, Giles said, that so few of the places seen on this daylong tour are recognized as historic or protected by such a designation.
Economic value, the definition of much of the New River's past, may also characterize its future, Giles said, with historic preservation as the key.
"I think we're finally getting the message that historical values alone aren't enough to justify historic preservation. You've got to have something else."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***