Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Float travelers hear of Radford's history
Radford Heritage Days participants were reminded of the vital role the New River has played in the city's past.
MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times
Clay Bane of Pembroke fires his flintlock rifle Saturday in front of the Ingles cabin in Radford. Bane and other re-enactors were portraying the Fincastle Militia of 1774 on Wilderness Road near the New River. Participants in the river float visited the re-enactment for a paddle-passing ceremony.
The partially submerged wooden frame of the old Ingles Ferry (left) can be seen along the shoreline of the New River in Radford. Shawn Hash of Tangent Outfitters gave tours of the site Saturday as part of the two-week New River float, which will end Saturday in Hinton, W.Va.
A Northern Parula warbler emerges from its nest made in a piece of hanging high-water debris along the bank of the New River bordering the Radford arsenal property.
Gallery
Related
- Trip marks 10 years as American Heritage River
- New River, 1st American Heritage River, still faces threats
- Float trip requires some manuevering
- Connecting residents with their river
- It’s a phenomenal, phenomenal river
- See a map of the float trip
Video
Audio slide show
More on the river
RADFORD -- A storm was coming, so all the speakers shortened their remarks, taking a quick turn at the stoop outside the reconstruction of John and Mary Ingles' cabin and then stepping aside.
Except Dick Harshberger.
The Radford councilman had some things he wanted to say, and he wasn't going to let the threat of a little rain, thunder and lightning keep him from sharing those things with the people who gathered Saturday to celebrate Radford Heritage Days.
Mixed in among the crowd were people dressed the way residents along the New River's banks might have dressed 200 years ago. There was the doctor, the weavers, the women working around the cabin and a small squad representing a frontier militia unit.
Bud Jefferies, the Ingles descendent who owns the farm, had spent much of the afternoon down by the burying ground, a short walk from the cabin. Two of the unmarked graves there may be John and Mary Ingles, but they aren't the oldest graves there. The most recent use of the cemetery was in 2000, when the ashes of Bobby Collins, were spread there and a monument was erected to his memory. Collins acted in "The Long Way Home," an outdoor drama that commemorated Mary Ingles' abduction at the Draper's Meadow massacre, her escape and her long walk back home.
Ingles Farm is open for visitors just a few times a year. Independence Day is the next scheduled opening. But Jefferies has been known to make an exception for people who drive up and want to look around.
"Sometimes they're coming from Texas or something, and I try to accommodate them," Jefferies said. "Sometimes it's hard to do if I'm in the middle of baling hay. If a cow's having a calf, there's not much I can do."
On Saturday, visitors could visit with the living history interpreters and walk down the farm road that follows the old Wilderness Road down to where Ingles Ferry used to be. Shawn Hash, the motor propelling a two-week float trip commemorating the 10th anniversary of the New River's becoming an American Heritage River, rowed visitors along the old ferry's route while Radford Councilman Bob Nicholson gave them the history of the site. The cabin was built in 1758. The ferry was working by 1762. It stopped in 1948 when a coal truck proved too heavy for the ferry to handle. The wreck of the last ferry is still visible along the river on the Radford side.
There was a bridge at the site from about 1842 until 1864. That's the year Confederate troops retreating from the Battle of Cloyds Mountain burned the bridge to keep Union troops from crossing the river.
On Saturday, about 20 people had floated downriver from near Claytor Dam to the old ferry site for a paddle-passing ceremony, something that's happened all along the commemorative trip. The night before, more than 50 had gathered for such a ceremony at the edge of Claytor Lake.
That group gathered at a picnic shelter, but the crowd Harshberger addressed was out in a field with nothing but a small cabin and the re-enactors' tents as potential shelter against the coming storm. But the councilman was determined to get some things said despite the darkening skies and freshening winds.
"New River Community Partners," Harshberger said of the group created by the American Heritage River designation. "They have made us think regionally and we must think regionally."
What happens upstream affects this valley and what happens here affects the people downstream into West Virginia, he said.
"We have to protect the New River above us and below us and right here," Harshberger said.
Pointing to the logo printed across the front of his T-shirt, Harshberger said Radford has declared itself The New River City and it's trying to live up to the name. The city is working toward a New River museum and research center that will deal with "the history, the biology, the anthropology -- all of the ologies" of the river and the life along its banks.
Speaking to the crowd that had gathered to celebrate Radford's heritage, Harshberger declared, "Our heritage is all wrapped up in that river."
Today, the float trip is scheduled to leave from Whitt-Riverbend Park in Pearisburg and travel to Rich Creek. The tour is expected to end Saturday in Hinton, W.Va.
