Next RHS ‘History Hike’ On A.T. May 16
On May 16, the Rockbridge Historical Society and a range of forest rangers, archaeologists, and historians will continue its popular “History Hike” series, following a pair of guided outings last fall that jointly celebrated the centennial of the Appalachian Trail.
The interactive outing and conversations extend RHS’ month-long series on Free Black people in Rockbridge and Virginia before the Civil War. Here, they track those descendant histories through the end of American slavery, and decades of rural Jim Crow life in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
At 10 a.m., participants will gather at the large parking area at Long Mountain Wayside (9 miles east of Buena Vista on U.S. 60), before descending south on the A.T. along Brown Mountain Creek.
After passing a trailside shelter (affording a springtime camping option), traces begin to appear of a post-Civil War Freedmen’s village, begun by 39 former slaves who stayed on the land after Emancipation brought their freedom. You can spy low but well-crafted walls, and newergrowth trees where small sharecropping fields had been cleared and cultivated. A chimney more definitively signals long-gone habitation that included cabins, barns, and springhouses, noted by interpretive signage about the site.
Washington and Lee University staff archaeologist Don Gaylord and RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson will illuminate some of the social contexts that marked its evolution during the 19th century, as well as the agriculture and craftwork that sustained it, before the lands were sold to the USFS in the 1920.
Area residents are also invited to visit https://www.nbatc. org/content/1992Interview.html where they can read the transcript of former U.S. Forest Service ranger David Benavitch’s 1992 oral history of Taft Hughes, the community’s last then-living resident who was born and raised there in 1909.
A little further past the site, a large single-log bridge was installed just a year ago. Over lunch, Glenwood & Pedlar District Ranger Lauren Stull and project director Megan Martin will describe the project designed to ensure both accessibility and conservation; the complex, manual engineering required to reach the site and install its span; and the commitments of volunteers from the Natural Bridge Appalachian Trail Club.
Note: The descent and return climb along Brown Mountain Creek are fairly steep stretches of the A.T. (the down and back total just over 4 miles). For an alternative loop back to the start, hikers can also continue south past the bridge toward the Lynchburg Reservoir, before linking up to Swapping Camp Road. A parking site there affords the opportunity to arrange car shuttles to the wayside, or to hike back up the fire road for a full 7-mile loop. The rain date for the hike is May 23.
Follow updates at facebook. com/rockbridgehistory for detailed trail and topo maps; opportunities to arrange car pools and shuttles; links to photos and anthropological studies of the community.
RHS’ Facebook also contains information about two related events that flank the hike, continuing its monthly series of “Revolutionary Books and Films, 1776-2026.” Next week, a May 12 screening of the Oscarnominated 2019 feature film about Harriet Tubman will be capped by a May 27 book discussion of “Israel on the Appomattox,” the prizewinning study of a thriving free Black community near Farmville established by emancipated slaves in the 1790s. RHS will host each event at 6 p.m. in the Piovano Room of the Rockbridge Regional Library.
