New trail spotlights Virginia of 1607

ON THE CHICKAHOMINY AND JAMES RIVERS, Va. — Ospreys and turkey vultures soar above cypress trees as kayaks glide on the water, passing herons scouting for fish and fiddler crabs scurrying along a narrow strip of shoreline.

Bill Portlock, senior educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, stops paddling on the Chickahominy River to point out arrow arum, wild rice, rose mallow and other plants growing in a tidal freshwater marsh, much as they did when Capt. John Smith explored the region in the early 17th century.

Virginia recently released travel maps for Capt. John Smith's Trail, a boat and auto tour along the James River following Smith's footsteps that is the first segment of what authorities hope will become a national water trail. The Chickahominy flows into the James in southeast Virginia.

The Virginia trail was developed in time for the 400th anniversary commemoration of the founding of Jamestown, America's first permanent English settlement, in 1607. The route includes Jamestown, plantations, parks and museums and places where Indians lived thousands of years before the English arrived.

State tourism and conservation officials tout the trail as "a great way for boaters and motorists to discover the beauty of Virginia that inspired John Smith."

Indeed, Virginia is fortunate that there are areas along the James that have not been overly developed, even though they are private property, said Randolph Turner, director of the Tidewater Regional Preservation Office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. He contributed to a book about Smith's voyages on the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the best spots to get a feel for what the landscape looked like in 1607 is at the confluence of the Chickahominy and James rivers, Turner said.

"If you want to understand Virginia 400 years ago, you have to get out on the water because that was the principal means of transportation," he said. "Obviously, as you go up and down the James River, or portions of the Chickahominy River, you're going to see development that wasn't there at that point in time. But in general terms ... you'll get a very, very good overview of what Virginia was like during that time period."

The trail also is a good tool for teaching people about the environment and how pollution has hurt the ecosystem since Smith's day, when the waters of the James were still clear, said the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Portlock. The organization works to restore the bay and its tributaries.

The trail "will get people outside. They'll begin to care and want to know more, and then they'll become more active in the process of trying to get improvements in the environment," Portlock said during a recent excursion on the Chickahominy and the James.