Drivin’ ’round the ’Burg

Today, Sonia and I took a break from our studies of history, civics, and economics.  We drove around Williamsburg a bit instead.

For a lot of reasons, Sonia has not been able to see much of our community.  She doesn’t have access to reliable transportation, and she manages to go the places she needs to go – to her classes at Literacy for Life, to the grocery store, to her doctor and dentist, to her daughter’s school to drop her off or pick her up for activities – but beyond this, she’s at home.

When she has gone out, she’s been tied to the GPS in her phone, so she doesn’t really know where she is.  She knows to turn left in 200 feet, and so forth.  But she doesn’t get to notice much about her surroundings.

So we went out to have a look around.  I drove her through the historic area in Colonial Williamsburg, and she had lots of questions about what this outdoor museum is and what it is trying to do.  She saw people dressed up in colonial garb as they walked down the street, and she had questions about that.  She wanted to know if “regular people” lived in the houses sprinkled throughout the town.  So many questions.  It was fun to share what I knew with her. It’s actually a pretty weird place to try to explain to newcomers.

Then we went to the Colonial Parkway and drove the 10 miles from Williamsburg to Jamestown.  The map of this road is above.

The National Park Service website provides a lot of detailed information about this roadway.  Here’s what it says:

The Colonial Parkway is a twenty-three-mile scenic roadway stretching from the York River at Yorktown to the James River at Jamestown. It connects Virginia's historic triangle: Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown. Several million travelers a year use this route to enjoy the natural and cultural beauty of Virginia.

The Parkway's construction presented the National Park Service with a unique challenge: build a thoroughfare unifying culturally distinct sites crossing several pristine natural environments while still maintaining the National Park Service's prime directive "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same." Adding to the complexity of the project was a construction period extending over twenty-six years through the Depression, World War II, and funding shortages.

The Parkway, completed in 1957, is an NPS success story. This roadway allows motorists to appreciate the surrounding landscape, while reducing impact on the resources and providing for traveler safety. Passing is only allowed in the marked passing zones and when oncoming traffic is clear. The maximum Parkway speed limit is 45 miles per hour.

PART I - The Concept

Colonial Parkway is a meticulously crafted landscape that integrates the region's natural and cultural resources into a memorial roadway of the American colonial experience. It marks an important change in the history of National Park Service (NPS) road-building traditions as the first NPS-designed parkway that unifies dispersed sites as part of a cohesive national park.

Authorized in 1930, Colonial National Historical Park is a 10,221-acre unit of the NPS located between the James and York rivers in Virginia. Originally designated a national monument (becoming a national historical park in 1936), Colonial NHP administers and interprets the sites of Jamestown Island and the Yorktown Battlefield. Central to the original legislation which created Colonial NHP was a plan for a scenic highway to link the sites into a "single coherent reservation." Free of any "modern" commercial development, the parkway was designed to provide continuity to the visitor experience of motoring through nearly 400 years of American colonial history. Traversing a diverse environment, the parkway provides visitors with dramatic open vistas of rivers and tidal estuaries as well as shady passageways through pine and hardwood forests.

America's "Sacred Shrines"

Since the late 19th century, preservationists considered Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown, often referred to as the "historic triangle," to be "sacred shrines on national life and liberty." Years of neglect, however, left these "shrines" in near ruin, which came to symbolize the erosion of Virginia's traditional society. Preservation groups such as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) began to advocate the conservation of colonial sites that embodied the ideals of the Anglo-American experience in North America. In 1893, the APVA acquired twenty-two acres on Jamestown Island and sponsored pilgrimages to the site. This parcel included the only surviving structure from the first capital of Virginia, the church tower, circa 1647. The APVA's program of heritage preservation influenced many state legislators who endorsed tourism as a way to promote statewide economic growth.

In 1926, newly elected Virginia Governor Harry Flood Byrd established the Conservation and Development Commission (CDC) to create an economic stimulus plan for the state. Under the direction of William Carson, the CDC attempted to transform Virginia into a "recreational mecca" by developing its natural and cultural resources for tourism. By the late 1920s, Governor Byrd began to refer to the state as a "virtual museum of the founding and growth of America," proclaiming," America is on wheels and Virginia is now awake to the dollar value of the tourist trade."

Williamsburg and the Parks Movement

By the 1920's the dilapidated condition of Williamsburg was seen by some as a grave injustice to its historical role in the founding and growth of America. Enticed by the lobbying of W.A.R. Goodwin, rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. decided to finance the restoration of Virginia's colonial capital to its former glory. As a preservation project, the restoration of Williamsburg was a novel and ambitious undertaking which had significant ramifications for the development of Colonial National Historical Park.

Rockefeller had strong connections with the NPS through his conservation efforts in the American west and in Acadia National Park, Maine. In 1928, Kenneth Chorley, head of the Williamsburg restoration, laid out a plan to future NPS Director Horace Albright to create a national historic site incorporating the sites of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. Writing to Chorley the following year Albright stated, "I am so enthusiastic over this proposed historic park that I can hardly restrain my imagination."

The proposal had the support of Carson and the Virginia CDC, which was working closely with the NPS to establish Shenandoah National Park in the mid-1920's. During the fall of 1929, Carson organized a tour of the Tidewater region for Albright and U.S, Representative Louis Cramton (D-MI). Continued meetings between Carson, NPS officials and Cramton resulted in a bill calling for the creation of a Colonial National Monument to commemorate the "high ideals of the founding of American liberties." The "Cramton Bill" was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover in December 1930.

Splendid Scenic Passage

During the spring of 1930, a survey of the area was undertaken by NPS engineer Oliver G. Taylor and NPS landscape architect Charles E. Peterson. Taylor and Peterson were directed to establish a proposed boundary for the park and a 500-foot right-of-way for the parkway. Initial proposals called for the parkway to follow an inland route along colonial-era roads, but during a tour of the Naval Weapons Station, just north of Yorktown, Peterson decided to align the road along the York River. In Peterson's estimation, the grade crossings, extensive tangents, modern intrusions and other "visual junk" encountered along an inland route were incongruous with modern parkway design standards. Because of access restrictions and the extensive tidal wetlands through Navy lands, Taylor and Peterson mapped the river alignment using aerial photographs provided by the Army navigators from Langley Air Base. Peterson's primary concern was designing a roadway that adhered to modern standards of parkway aesthetics developed by the builders of the Bronx River Parkway in Westchester County, New York. Tours of the Bronx River Parkway and the federally built Mount Vernon Memorial Highway provided Peterson with a model of a limited access highway with broad sweeping curves, set in a meticulously landscaped right-of-way devoid of commercial development. These features, derived from 19th-century romantic landscape theories, created a safer and more pleasant drive compared to the increasingly congested urban strips.

Parkway design began in the spring of 1931 with the creation of the Eastern Division of the Branch of Plans and Designs under Peterson's direction. NPS landscape architects were responsible for the overall architectural and landscape treatment, but the roadway and bridge construction specifications were prepared by engineers from the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), Department of Agriculture, under a 1926 interagency agreement. In 1931 a BPR field office was opened in Williamsburg to facilitate parkway construction. Special agreements with the Navy and private land owners transferred ten miles of the route between Yorktown and Williamsburg to the NPS free of charge, allowing construction to begin that spring. Despite the fortuitous start, design and routing conflicts, limited funding and war stretched construction over a 26-year period. By 1937 the road was completed only to Williamsburg. Except for the construction of the Williamsburg Tunnel and Halfway Creek Bridge, both constructed in the 1940's, it was not until 1955 that funds were available to extend the parkway to Jamestown Island in anticipation of the 350th anniversary of Jamestown's founding.

There are 31 historical markers along the length of this parkway – 18 of them between Jamestown and Williamsburg.  Sonia and I stopped to read most of them.  They are a snapshot of the history of this part of Virginia, so they were a nice supplement to the videos on American colonial history that we’ve been watching.  We got out of the car and walked a couple of times – to see the vista over the James River to Surry County and to read a couple of markers that were further away from the road.

This is the Nathaniel Bacon marker, at one of the pull-offs where we stopped.  The text of the marker reads “Among the tombs in the burial ground of the Ringfield family is a marker to Colonel Nathaniel Bacon who was prominent in Virginia affairs in the last half of the seventeenth century.  He was a kinsman but an opponent of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr. – “the Rebel” – who led his forces against Governor Sir William Berkeley in 1676.” The James River is in the background of this photo.

This road doesn’t look like it belongs in the 21st century.  There is almost no traffic most of the time; the speed limit is low and commercial vehicles are banned.  There are no painted lane markers and few access ramps. No one uses the parkway if they really need to get somewhere – there are faster routes.  But it is quiet and peaceful.  I use the parkway fairly often, because its terminus is near where I live and it doesn’t take too much extra time to get where I’m going if I go by the parkway.  It’s worth it to me because of its peace and tranquility.

“Colonial Parkway Sunset Near Sandy Bay” is a photograph by Karen Jorstad which was uploaded on September 23rd, 2017 https://fineartamerica.com/featured/colonial-parkway-sunset-near-sandy-bay-karen-jorstad.html. It really does look like this if you catch it at the right time of day. This is normal traffic on this road.