History of Jordan’s Point

 

Prepared by Elise Sheffield of Boxerwood Nature Center

for Lylburn Downing Middle School, Lexington, Virginia

April 2008

 

Section One: 1738 – 1820

USI. 1 (maps), US1. 4 (colonial settlement)

materials:

• map, North Fork of the James
• photo, Alexander-Withrow House

 

The story of Jordan’s Point and the land we now call Rockbridge County begins with a deal between a King and an adventurer.  In 1738, King George II gave 92,100 acres of unsettled land west of the Blue Ridge to a man named Benjamin Borden.  To keep the land, Borden had to settle at least a hundred families here within a year.  Luckily for Borden there were many Scots-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania who were eager for more land and opportunity. These settlers traveled southwest through the Shenandoah Valley on a pathway that soon became a wagon trail.  This trail eventually became the Great Road, the main road for all settlers heading West.  Today we know this road as Route 11. 

 

Travelers on the Great Road had to cross a river known as the North Fork (or tributary) of the James.  Today we know this river as the Maury River. The best place to cross the North River was a shallow area near what is now Jordan’s Point.  Many new travelers crossed the Point and settled in the area. One of these settlers was a man named Gilbert Campbell.  Mr. Campbell built a house by the Point and operated a shallow crossing called a ford. His son later gave land for Lexington when the Virginia Legislature created Rockbridge County in 1778 and required a town for a courthouse.

 

As the population west of the Blue Ridge grew, travel up and down the Great Road increased. The next owner of the Point and ford established a farm and the first store.  Records show Mr. Alexander’s store sold items such as sugar, cloth, pencils, paper, and knives.  It also sold rum without a license.  Mr. Alexander and his family prospered. They later moved into Lexington and built the large brick house which was the only building not burned to the ground during a terrible fire in 1796.  Today we know this structure as the Alexander-Withrow House, which is located on the corner of Main and Washington (across from Grand Furniture).  From the beginning, the Point and its owners played an important role in the life of Rockbridge County.

 

Section Two:  1820 – 1850

USI. 1 (maps), USI.8 (territorial expansion)

materials:

• map of Virginia illustrating James River watershed (missing)
• photo, batteaux re-enactors, courtesy Virginia Canals and Navigation Society

 

By 1820, Rockbridge County was home to hundreds of families.  Since wagon transportation was difficult and money scarce, most families grew their own food and traded locally for what they needed. Those with larger farms soon became interested in selling their products to markets beyond Lexington in order to make more money.  Cowboys drove cattle all the way up the Valley to Philadelphia, but how could farmers get corn and wheat to market? In those days, it was very difficult to cross the Blue Ridge so the best way to send products to larger cities in eastern Virginia was by nature’s own highway—the rivers. 

 

Rockbridge was part of the James River watershed, whose waters flowed past Lynchburg and Richmond before entering the Chesapeake Bay.  Local farmers were able to export their products to the cities during times of high water.  They built their own boats called by batteaux (a French word) and shipped their goods down the river.  Early batteaux were often just rafts tied across two canoes; later batteaux were more like flat open boats, sometimes more than fifty feet in length.

 

To get to the cities, the batteaux had to travel down the North (Maury) River and into the James.  The James cut east through the Blue Ridge at a pass called Balcony Falls, near Glasgow.  Balcony Falls was the only pass through the mountains but as its name suggests, the seven-mile stretch of river was dangerous.  At Balcony Falls many loads flipped and people drowned.   Without better options, however, people continued to rely on batteaux until 1860.  The Point near Lexington served as one of the launch sites for the batteaux during these years. 

 

Section Three: 1820 – 1850, part 2

USI. 1 (primary documents), USI.8 (territorial expansion)

materials:

• photo, Stono and carved banister
• map of Jordan’s Point (missing)

 

A man named John Jordan owned the Point during the time of the batteaux.  John Jordan had a six-foot wife, twelve sons and two daughters and was famous in his time.  He owned and operated many forges in the region.  These forges were important because they supplied the iron needed for tools and building supplies throughout Virginia.  Mr. Jordan also designed and built several fine homes in Lexington as well as Ann Smith Academy and Washington Hall, the main building at W & L.  About the same time Thomas Jefferson was designing UVA, Jordan built his own classical house in Lexington.  He lined the front of his home with columns and carved the head of his favorite dog on a banister. His hill-top home, called “Stono” still overlooks the Point today.

 

The Point underwent many changes during Jordan’s ownership.  Jordan was smart and quickly saw the potential for using the river as a source of power for new industries. By diverting some of the river to a mill race he was able to power a flour mill and a saw mill.  The flow of the water turned the big mill wheels which in turn spun the grinding stones and saws.  Jordan also established an iron foundry and forge that used water from the river as part of the cooling process, as well a blacksmith shop.

 

With businesses expanding and travel though the Valley increasing, Jordan also built the first bridge that crossed the North River near where the Lexington dam is located today.  Jordan chose to build a covered bridge with stone abutments; floods have washed away bridges at this site a number of times since then, but there was always a covered bridge at the Point until the 1930’s.  Jordan had to pay for this first bridge out of his own pockets.  To recover his investment, he charged a toll for all who crossed the river on it, including farm animals.  A wagon with horse team was 30 cents, a pedestrian 5 cents, and a hog, ¼ of a cent per head.  It was a profitable time for Jordan and for Jordan’s Point.

 

Section Four: 1850 – 1860

US 1.2 (primary documents), USII.2 (geography), USI.8 (westward expansion)

materials:

• map, “19^th Century Inland Navigations of the Virginia,” courtesy Virginia Canals and Navigation Society
• photo, North River locks – looks like Reid Dam below Lexington

 

Jordan’s Point was a center for industry and trade by 1850.  It soon became even busier. As population increased in the Valley, so did the desire for trade.  Rockbridge had a good climate for growing crops and many mineral resources in the mountains.  These natural resources and an economy based in part on slave labor meant the area soon had many agricultural and mineral-related products to sell to the wider world.   By 1860 these products included iron ore, whiskey, eggs, mutton, beef, butter, marble, corn, animal skins, wool, tobacco, hay, venison, oats, shingles, lime, cement, and turnips. Businesses in eastern Virginia were eager to purchase these products.  They were also eager to sell their own products to customers in the Valley.  An improved river transportation system finally made that possible. 

 

This new 200-mile system involved a series of dams, locks, and canals on the James River and its tributaries. The dams descended the rivers in a series of steps.  Their purpose was to slow the current and deepen the water for better navigation.  The locks at each dam lifted or lowered the boats to the next level like elevators. The canals or aquaducts that ran along dangerous sections of the rivers improved the safety of the journeys both upriver and down.  The canal system meant that transportation of goods and people could now safely occur both downriver and upriver.

 

Earlier in our nation’s history, George Washington had envisioned such a system extending all the way to the Mississippi River, but Lexington was the very last stop. Construction of the James River section from Richmond had reached the mouth of the North (Maury) River by 1848, but it took twelve more years for the system to arrive at Jordan’s Point.  Mr. Jordan was hired to oversee the construction of this last section, which included building 12 dams and 25 stone locks along a 25-mile stretch of river from Glasgow to Lexington. The project was a success but Jordan did not live to see its completion.  After years of work by engineers, laborers, and prisoners, the canal system reached Lexington in 1860, just months before the outbreak of the Civil War.

 

Section Five: 1860 - 1870

USI.1 (primary documents), USI.9 (Civil War)

materials:

• map, Hunter’s raid on Lexington
• photo, VMI barracks burned
• narrative, Mrs. Preston’s first-person account

 

During the 1860’s, the citizens of Rockbridge experienced two types of invasions.  The first “invasion” was the long-awaited arrival of canal boats from Lynchburg and Richmond. The second was the unexpected arrival of Civil War General Hunter and his 18,000 Union troops.  Hunter and his men were marching down the Valley on their way to attack Lynchburg.  They arrived on the banks of the North (Maury) River, across from Jordan’s Point on June 10, 1864.  Confederate troops were waiting for him and they filled the covered bridge with hay and set it afire.

 

Stranded on the other side of the river, Hunter’s men lobbed shells across the water toward VMI and then crossed over on their own pontoon bridge.  They burned buildings at Jordan’s Point and also destroyed several packet boats.  One of the boats they discovered was “hiding” in a lock downriver; it was filled with ammunition belonging to the Confederacy. 

 

The Confederate troops knew they couldn’t hold back 18,000 troops so they quickly retreated to Buchanan.  When Hunter entered Lexington he found a town of women and children; most of the men and boys had fled to the mountains with their family’s cattle, horses, and sheep.  The troops occupied Lexington for three days.  They set fire to VMI, ate all the food they could find (including acres of onions) and looted homes, stores, and farms. Then they marched on toward Lynchburg, and their defeat. Hunter freed local people who had been enslaved, but he also left the Rockbridge region hungry and in ruins.  Activity at Jordan’s Point came to a standstill.

 

Section Six: 1870 – 1880

USII. 1(primary documents), USII.2 (geography), USII.3 (industrial expansion)

Materials:

• illustration, contemporary artist’s rendition of Jordan’s Point c. 1860 – 1880
• map, Jordan’s Point and its numbered lots in 1873
• photo, packet boat (note burned VMI in distance), and ticket
• narrative, Canal Boat Lost in 1854

 

After the war, it took time for prosperity to return to the area.  Hunter’s Raid had destroyed buildings and boats at Jordan’s Point, but the canal system was not damaged.  Before long, trade between Rockbridge and eastern cities resumed and by 1870 many boats were up and running.  These flat-bottomed boats were much larger and safer than the batteaux.  Fifteen feet wide and up to one hundred feet long, some packet boats transported passengers while others transported goods. The passenger boats had a covered deck with a section for men on one side and women on the other.

 

Because the dams slowed the current, teams of mules pulled the boats up and down the river on towpaths while boatmen guided the boats with long metal-tipped poles. When the towpaths switched sides, the boats would wait while the mules crossed the river on a ferry; each mule team pulled the boats for a 12-mile stretch.  The boats traveled the river night and day. When approaching a lock, the captain of the packet boats would blast a loud horn or conch shell to awaken the lock operators, who lived by each lock. If there were no mishaps, a traveler getting on at Jordan’s Point might reach Richmond thirty-five hours later, for a price of $4.00, sleeping bunk included.

 

The arrival of the canal system transformed Jordan’s Point into an inland port.  There were wharves and docks for the packet boats, and warehouses to store the many goods sent up and down the river. Rockbridge soon was exporting tons of pork and grain and iron ore to Lynchburg and Richmond, and importing merchandise that once had been difficult to get.  The increased variety of goods at the Point also reflected the expanding influence of factories and railroads in other parts of the country.  Some goods imported from Richmond first came from even farther away.  For example, customers at Jordan’s Point could buy canned salmon from San Francisco, china from England, and spices and teas from tropical lands.  Before long there was even a department store at Jordan’s Point that sold ready-made clothes for men, women, and children as well as hairbrushes, fancy hats, seventy-five kinds of boots and shoes, plows, reapers and saddles.   From the late 1860’s through the 1880’s, Jordan’s Point was a central trading point for our entire region.

 

Section Seven: 1880 – 1930

USII. 1(primary documents), USII.2 (geography), USII.3 (industrial expansion)

materials:

• photo, Castle Hotel built during the 1890’s boom days; the walkway crosses Woods Creek behind the new train station which is located beyond the right of the picture (note tracks)

• photo, elephant and circus rider at intersection of Henry and Main heading to Jordan’s Point (note the large limestone stepping stones across Main Street) – early 20^th c.?
• photo, downtown Lexington
• photo, ice-harvesting on the Maury above the Lexington dam at Jordan’s Point (looking toward East Lexington)

• narrative, circus memories from John Letcher

 

The next big change to Jordan’s Point occurred with the arrival of the railroad in 1880, which crossed the Maury River at Jordan’s Point. The rail lines ran north and south along the Great Road of Virginia, and east and west from Richmond.  Because of Lexington’s location between these points, many people thought it would become one of the railroad hubs of the Southeast. Fancy hotels sprung up throughout the area in anticipation of this boom. The boom, however, never happened.  

 

The waterpower at Jordan’s Point was not strong enough to attract the kind of heavy industry supported by a rail system, and the land was not even big enough for a train depot.  A train station was built in Lexington instead. With six trains coming and going each day, the Point was no longer the center of trade and transportation.  As for the big boom, it went south to the village of Big Lick (pop. 800), now known as Roanoke. 

 

The Point did not develop into a center of industry many had hoped but it was still a good place for the old mills. In the early 1900’s, these mills continued to run on hydropower from the river.  Water from the river ran through the millrace and turned the big mill wheels.  Meanwhile, water running over the old dams at Lexington and Buena Vista turned newly installed turbines that generated some of our area’s first electricity. Before long, however, power lines brought more electricity from distant coal-fired plants.

 

In its quieter life, Jordan’s Point was a place for harvesting ice in the winter and enjoying the circus in the summer. In those days, the circus arrived in Lexington on the train.  Circus crews pitched their big tents on the flat land and drew water for their animals from the river.  On circus days, the traveling entertainers and their animals would march from the Point to Main Street and back, leading a very popular parade. The days of the packet boat were long over, but Jordan’s Point it was still an important part of community life.

 

Section Eight:  1930 – present

USII. 1(primary documents), USII.2 (geography), USII.3 (industrial expansion), USII.5 (automobile and electrification), USII.6 (impact of World War II on homefront)

materials:

• photo, railroad across Jordan’s Point, c. 1940? (note covered auto bridge that has just replaced by the cement highway bridge at far left as well as buildings on the Point; trains backed up into Lexington on this rail line)
• photo, Lexington Wastewater Treatment Plant (missing)
• narrative, poem about the Maury River covered bridge

 

The arrival of the railroad spelled the end of Jordan’s Point as an inland port.  More advances in technology brought even more changes to this landmark.  The rise of the private automobile, for example, changed transportation patterns again.  More traffic and long-distance trucking meant the two-lane covered bridge into Lexington was no longer adequate. By the mid-1940’s, this bridge was replaced by a steel and concrete structure further downriver, similar to the one used today.  The increase in automotive transportation also meant a decline in the local use of rail.  First, the passenger line to Staunton was torn up and melted down for weaponry needs during World War II. Then the freight line to Lynchburg was destroyed by the flood of 1969 and never replaced. (Even more recently, a remaining iron trestle near the Maury was disassembled and melted down to supply the huge demand for construction materials in 21^st-century China).

 

Businesses at the Point changed too.  When the last mill closed in the 1940’s, the Point was sold to VMI.  A few years later, VMI sold it to the City of Lexington.  The City then built its municipal wastewater treatment plant at the Point. It was important to have a modern facility for processing and purifying the wastewater (in the old days, Woods Creek carried the city’s sewage straight into the river!), but the location at Jordan’s Point was a problem.   When the Maury flooded, so did the plant.  When that happened, raw sewage flowed into the river and on to the Chesapeake Bay. Today an improved wastewater treatment facility sits on a hill behind Tractor Supply.  Its in-take and out-take points are downriver from Jordan’s Point near the beginning of the Chessie Trail. 

 

The Chessie Trail itself was once the Chesapeake and Ohio rail line, and before that it had been a towpath for the old canal system. A walk along the Chessie Trail from Lexington to Buena Vista still reveals ruins of several large stone dams and locks. As for Jordan’s Point, it is now a city park, with soccer fields and picnic tables and an exciting history known only to a lucky few.

Bibliography

 

Boley, Henry.  Lexington in Old Virginia.  Richmond, VA:  Garrett and Massie, 1936.

 

Brady, D., E, Jr., John S. Letcher, B. P. Knight, “Views of and on East Lexington,” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. X.  Ed. Larry Bland. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1990. 345 – 353.

 

Driver, Robert J., Jr., “Lexington and Rockbridge County in the Civil War,” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. XI.  Ed. Larry Bland. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 2000. 13 – 23.

 

Eby, Cecil.  “David Hunter:  Villain of the Valley,” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. VI.  Ed. Royster Lyle. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1966, 63 – 71.

 

Gilliam, Catharine.  Jordan’s Point – Lexington, Virginia:  A Site History.  Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. IX.  Eds. Larry Bland and Sharon Ritenour. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1982, 109 - 138.

 

Isley, Willard.  “John Jordan, Builder.” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. XII.  Ed. Anne Heiner. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1970. 93 – 98. 

 

Knapp, John.  “Trade and Transportation in Rockbridge:  The First Hundred Years.” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. IX.  Eds. Larry Bland and Sharon Ritenour. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1982, 109 - 138.

 

Letcher, John S., Only Yesterday in Lexington, Virginia. Verona, VA:  McClure Printing Company, 1976.

 

Moore, John S. “John Jordan, Baptist Layman.” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. VI.  Ed. Royster Lyle. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1966, 63 – 71.

 

Trout, William E. III., “An Automobile Tour of the North River Navigation,” Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society, Vol. XIII.  Ed. Larry Bland. Lexington, VA:  Rockbridge Historical Society, 1979. 105 – 114.

 

With special thanks to the staff of Special Collections/Leyburn Library of Washington and Lee University.