MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Mallie Tucker (right), 2, and her sister, Zoey Tucker, 4, use an inner tube on the New River near the Virginia-North Carolina state line Monday. Keeping a close eye on the girls are their mother, Brook Tucker (center), and her friend Sarah Cain, all from Elkin, N.C. Monday was the fourth day of a two-week float trip commemorating the 10th anniversary of the New River's designation as an American Heritage River.

MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

George Santucci, executive director of the National Committee for the New River, paddles from the shore at the Bridle Creek public boat launch in Grayson County. The committee is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the river's preservation. It was born three decades ago in the wake of a fight against a pair of dams that would have flooded more than 40,000 acres of Virginia and North Carolina.

BRIDLE CREEK -- There are lots of ways to enjoy a river.

On Monday, along a 12-mile stretch of the New River, a young woman stretched out on a lounge chair in knee-deep water while a radio on the bank blared country music.

A pair of old men sat on that bank with a cooler between them, talking about golf.

Two little girls shared one inner tube as they bobbed along with their mom.

At very irregular intervals, men stood knee deep or hip deep in the current, casting for the bass that lurked among the ledges in the window-clear water.

Some folks simply splashed and sang, freed from the day's heat by the cold current, while horses drank from the river's edge.

George Santucci floated past each of those scenes in Grayson County, bouncing a canoe through Molly Osborne's Shoals and talking about threats averted and threats still alive along this American Heritage River.

Monday was the fourth day of the two-week float trip commemorating the 10th anniversary of the New becoming the first American river with that designation. Santucci is the executive director of the National Committee for the New River, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the river's preservation. It was born three decades ago in the wake of a fight against a pair of dams that would have flooded more than 40,000 acres of Virginia and North Carolina.

Santucci wasn't around for that fight, but he was in the thick of a more recent battle against a prison Virginia planned to build in Cox's Chapel, not far from Penitentiary Shoals.

Neither the committee nor the people of Cox's Chapel were against the prison. They were just against building it here, on the banks of the New.

Santucci pointed out a tree on a hill with a long view up the river. That, he said, is where the prison would have gone. Now it's being built on the other side of Independence. It's still bringing jobs to an area that needs them, but it won't be looming over a national treasure that has the potential to bring even more money and even more jobs.

The former prison site will likely be protected by a conservation easement, Santucci said, just like much of the land around it.

Buster Osborne, 95, owns the land surrounding the erstwhile prison site. It's already protected. So is the River Ridge Cattle Co., Charlotte and Phil Hanes' 1,000-acre spread across the river.

There are lots of way to enjoy a river.

The water beetles that skittered in zig-zag patterns ahead of Santucci's canoe seemed to be having as good a time as their small minds would allow. So did the crayfish the ran backward across submerged rocks and the water snakes that slithered among the shallows -- until one of them struck at a kayak for getting in its way.

Even the bass among the ledges seemed content between the times they were snagged and hauled into the sunshine, then freed and put back in the river that long ago a power company wanted to drown.

This morning, the float trip organized by New River Community Partners and Tangent Outfitters was expected to leave from Baywood and travel 14 river miles to Oldtown.