Cities, after all, are but larger patterns of individual people. People who have been tested by time and tribulation and yet come out smiling, full of faith and courage, never fail to command our admiration. That Richmond has done this, we submit as our plea for your appreciation of our old city.
The people of Richmond have made the city and in turn been made by it. No one can long live in the mellowness of Richmond without feeling that here is a calm that is not dead but gay, an ease and a friendliness that is real and not assumed, a determination to build always for the future but never to forget the heritage of the past which is our inspiration, a will to be of such a quality that we cannot fail to give strength to the nation, going always forward in the spirit of those who would surmount the obstacles of the present in order to attain goals inspired by ideals of right and justice.
A Tour of Historic Richmond
Happily, Richmond has preserved much of her charm of a bygone day, despite the fact that she has kept step with the times. Innumerable shrines remain to remind the visitor of the dramatic part played by the city in the making of the nation. In virtually every quarter of the town will be found reminders of the past—public buildings, homes and gardens, memorials to her sons and daughters; in short, showplaces of wide interest to those who would acquaint themselves with the history of a section visited by Englishmen soon after the establishment of a settlement at Jamestown.
The tour has been planned on a geographic basis to permit as much as possible to be seen. It is almost impossible to sightsee chronologically in Richmond, as our forefathers built where they wished and not according to a city plan. The result is that the old buildings of Richmond are scattered quite widely. Leaving the heart of the city, we drive to the intersection of Third and Main streets and proceed south on Third to the end of the street, where we come to Gamble’s Hill Park.
Gamble’s Hill Park
Below you rolls “the mighty James,” the father of Virginia’s history, along the banks of which Richmond had her beginning. In 1645 Fort Charles was erected here at the falls of the James to protect the Tidewater settlers from the incursions of the Indians. The cross, planted on rugged boulders or river-jacks from the James, was erected here by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities in memory of the valiant little group of explorers, who landed on an island below this point on May 24, 1607.
Across the ravine on the extreme right is the State penitentiary, ably run along modern lines.
Bringing your eyes along the crest of the same hill sloping down towards the river, you will see Hollywood Cemetery, where lie buried two Presidents of the United States, James Monroe and John Tyler; the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis; General J. E. B. Stuart, Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, “the pathfinder of the seas;” Fitzhugh Lee (General R. E. Lee is buried in Lexington, Virginia); George E. Pickett and some 18,000 Confederate soldiers, including the Virginians who fell in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.
Immediately beneath Gamble’s Hill curve are the remains of the once vital Kanawha Canal, Virginia’s earliest great westward transportation system, of which George Washington was the first president in 1785.