Communities Thrive on Roots / Old Ways Are Still the Best Ways on the Waterfront

By LAWRENCE LATANE III

Long before highway bridges linked its many points and peninsulas, the waterfront region between Westmoreland and Gloucester counties was connected by cultural identities.

Every river and creek in the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula was filled with crabs, oysters and fish and the families that fished for them. The land was tied together by a network of farmers and centuries worth of assorted kin.

Even a drive today down either peninsula underscores the deep devotion to the past. State Route 3 through the Northern Neck is sometimes still referred to as Historyland Highway, and the famously crooked roads that wind through King and Queen County still heed to rights of way laid down in colonial times.

Anyone who doubts if the Northern Neck is different from the rest of Virginia need only approach it from the south on state Route 3 and enter it over the Robert Opie Norris Jr. Bridge. Viewed from two and a quarter miles away across the Rappahannock River, the Neck floats on the horizon like another world.

The same can be said for a drive east of U.S. 17 into a watermen’s community called Guinea. Soon enough, tidal water overflows the ditches and a sea of marshland is all that fills the void between the sky and the Chesapeake Bay. For a short journey way back in time, travel down the back roads of King William County that lead to the Mattaponi and Pamunkey Indian reservations. Seasonal rhythms of the spring shad-spawning run and the autumn arrival of migratory waterfowl still measure time.

The 10-county region was settled in the decades following the 1607 Jamestown colony and before that had been home to the Powhatan Confederation of Algonguin-speaking tribes.

A glimpse of the region’s Indian past is reflected in the names of its many waterways. The Potomac, the Rappahannock, the Corrotoman, the Machodoc, the Nomini and Chesapeake are Indian names as pronounced by the likes of Capt. John Smith and the other early Virginia explorers. The next chapter of Northern Neck/Middle Peninsula history comes out in the towns and places. Urbanna was designated a tobacco port on the Rappahannock River during Colonial times. President George Washington was born on Popes Creek Plantation in Westmoreland County. Fortified earthworks facing the York River at Gloucester Point saw use in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. King William County claims the oldest courthouse in continuous existence. It was built around 1725.

Growing demand for waterfront is fueling a new development-based economy in the rural region. But, centuries-old mainstays such as farming, fishing and forestry still define the area’s personality even if few people are farmers, watermen or loggers anymore.

Farming, fishing and forestry provided jobs for a high of 5.9 percent of Northumberland County workers to a low of 2.2 percent of Gloucester’s workers, according to 2000 census figures. State, local and federal government, and sales and management accounted for the bulk of the region’s employment and many people, especially in King William, Westmoreland and Gloucester counties, commute an hour or two to population centers for work.

County populations in 2000 ranged from a low of 6,630 in King and Queen and a high of 34,780 in neighboring Gloucester. Total population in the 10 counties was 133,037.

The huge Smurffit-Stone pulp mill in West Point symbolizes the role that the wood products and lumber industry still plays in the area. Empty oyster shucking houses tell volumes about the struggles the seafood industry faces. A once-booming oyster fishery in the bay and tidal rivers has waned in the face of overharvesting and a disease epidemic that has wiped out most of the bay’s oyster population. But, fisheries still play an important role in the region.

One surprise is Reedville, a small town of Victorian homes at the tip of the Northern Neck. The village is the second-largest U.S. fishing port in terms of landings. More than 400 million pounds were landed in Reedville in 2004, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Most of the catch was an inedible fish called menhaden, which is netted in the bay and Atlantic Ocean and processed into fish meal and oil at the Omega Protein factory on Cockrells Creek.

Boating has always been a way of life on the two peninsulas. Deltaville, at the tip of Middlesex County, until recently was the boat-building capital of the Chesapeake Bay. It was known for the fine wooden deadrise boats built for crabbing and oystering. Few boats are being built in town today, but it serves as a key boating, marina and sailing center on the Chesapeake Bay.

Colonial Beach, in Westmoreland County, boasts one of the longest public beaches in the state. Its beach stretches for four miles along the Potomac River.

Colonial preservation activities that began in the 1930s at places such as Westmoreland County’s Stratford Hall Plantation, the birthplace of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, still continue. In Richmond County, the nonprofit Menokin Foundation is working to stabilize and preserve the ruins of the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, who along with Westmoreland’s Richard Henry Lee, were the only brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence.

The region has fewer firebrands than ever before. Demographic trends show retirees moving in and young people moving out in search of jobs. Some 3,823 people, or about one of three Lancaster County residents, in 2000 were 62 years old or older. During the same year, only 363 people, or 3.1 percent of county residents, fell into the 20 to 24 age category.

— Contact staff writer Lawrence Latane at llatane@timesdispatch.com or (804) 333-3461.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

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