A stretch of the Appomattox River Trail that runs through the property will be permanently accessible to the public.
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation recently completed its first conservation project in the City of Petersburg—an open-space easement on 4.8 acres owned by Friends of the Lower Appomattox River (FOLAR).
FOLAR’s acquisition is a critical component in the development of the Appomattox River Trail. When completed, the trail will be over 25 miles in length, connecting a rich diversity of historical, cultural, and physiographic areas, stretching from Lake Chesdin in the Piedmont to the James River in the Coastal Plain, where it will connect to historic City Point National Park in the City of Hopewell.
One of several new access points on the Appomattox River created by the FOLAR project.
The acquisition and easement were supported by a $159,000 grant from VOF’s Preservation Trust Fund. The easement requires that the property be permanently accessible to the public for outdoor recreation and education.
“We are thrilled to be a partner in this visionary project, which will provide thousands of citizens with new opportunities to connect to the Appomattox River and nature,” said VOF Executive Director Brett Glymph. “It represents the kind of community-driven conservation that VOF is proud to support.”
The dotted line along the south bank of the river between Battersea and McKenzie Street Park will become a solid line thanks to this project. Across the river is Virginia State University.
“FOLAR is dedicated to conserving and protecting the Appomattox River for all to enjoy,” said Wendy Austin, FOLAR’s Executive Director, “We were very glad to make this happen.”
With its new protected status, the property contributes to several state and local conservation programs. It contains approximately 1,742 feet of shoreline on the Appomattox River, a state-designated scenic river. The Appomattox River Trail is a Regional Featured Project in the 2018 Virginia Outdoors Plan prepared by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. Located within the North Battersea/Pride’s Field National Historic District, the property is also identified as a priority site in the Commonwealth’s ConserveVirginia project under the Cultural and Historic Preservation and Scenic Preservation categories.
FOLAR will use the VOF grant and other funding to make improvements to the property and trail system before conveying the land to the City of Petersburg.
Remnants of arches believed to be connected to an old mill are among the few structures left on the property.
Once completed, the Appomattox River Trail will leverage the growth of the outdoor recreation industry and its beneficial impact on health and wellness in the metro-Richmond region, creating connections between hundreds of miles of regional trail, including the Virginia Capital Trail, James River Park system, the East Coast Greenway, and the proposed Ashland-to-Petersburg trail.
Farmville officials hope to reduce pollution and erosion with a tree planting along this stretch of the Appomattox River.
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation has awarded seven grants totaling $21,150 to conservation projects in the Appomattox River watershed that will reduce pollution and erosion in the river and its tributaries.
About half of the funding comes from VOF’s Appomattox River Fund, which was established through the TERRA program in 2019 using mitigation funding from a bridge replacement project in Amelia County. The other half comes from VOF’s general fund.
Portion of a Powhatan County property where Capital Region Land Conservancy wants to install a canoe/kayak launch.
“We are thrilled to be able to support projects that not only improve water quality across the watershed, but also create or enhance public access to outdoor spaces,” said Emily White, VOF’s grant program manager.
Grant recipients are:
Capital Region Land Conservancy: $3,500 to assist with the design of the trail access and canoe/kayak launch at a 1,400-acre property on the Appomattox River in Powhatan County.
EcoCrew 2831, Heart of Virginia Council, Boy Scouts of America: $1,650 for supplies for invasive plant removal, native plantings, and water quality monitoring along Stoney Creek at the Albright Scout Reservation in Chesterfield County.
The City of Hopewell plans to install a trash filtration system on this outflow pipe at City Park.
Hopewell Parks and Recreation: $5,000 to support the installation of a StormX Trash Net system at City Park. The large, heavy duty net is attached to the open end of a stormwater outfall pipe and is designed to catch solid debris like trash and leaves, while allowing stormwater to flow unobstructed.
Powhatan County: $1,500 to increase public awareness of the value of the Appomattox watershed by placing an interpretive panel along a highly trafficked trail in Fighting Creek Park. The panel will educate users on best practices to prevent pollution and erosion within the watershed.
Piedmont Soil and Water Conservation District: $3,500 to combat kudzu infestation in a 1,450-foot riparian buffer along Grosses Creek at the Fuqua School in Farmville.
Town of Farmville: $1,000 for a tree planting along Buffalo Creek and the Dogwood Trail, which provides access to the Lee Woodruff Blueway.
United Parents Against Lead & Other Environmental Hazards: $5,000 to support the Heights Green Space and Clean Waterway Extension project in Petersburg. The grant will help to fund the purchase of trees and shrubs, planting equipment, and trash removal gear and services, as well as the development of outreach materials and a stipend to 15 youth participants.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has begun, much of the public has been seeking refuge and entertainment in outdoor spaces. As a result, the Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve has seen a dramatic increase in public visitation, with the parking lot filling up every open day and large crowds using the trail network.
Unfortunately, with this upsurge in visitation, staff have witnessed increased attempts to use the Preserve in ways that are inappropriate and detrimental to its natural communities and cultural resources. Examples include partial demolition of a dry-stacked stone wall surrounding Dawson Cemetery, attempted looting of a Civil War quarry trench with a metal detector and excavating equipment, and increased instances of littering, mountain biking, dog walking, trespassing on closed areas of the Preserve, and other prohibited activities.
The cumulative impact of these activities, in combination with the Governor’s recent stay-at-home Executive Order, has forced the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to close the Preserve temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic until further notice, starting Friday, April 3rd.
“We truly regret this closure at a time when other local parks are closing and people are seeking exercise and fresh air outdoors, but we are obligated to manage the Preserve for the natural and cultural resources it protects, as well as for public safety,” said Preserve Manager Joe Villari. “We fear that the large crowds gathering at the Preserve pose a risk to the spread of the COVID-19 virus and violate the Governor’s Executive Order.”
Staff will continue to be present on site and will work with local police and the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s conservation officers to monitor and appropriately cite any trespassers. Please help staff protect the Preserve’s valuable resources and maximize safety for all by following this closure and spreading the word to others who may be looking to come out to our trails. Check back on our website and Facebook page for updates.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Preserve Manager Joe Villari, jvillari@vof.org, or Preserve Technician Summers Cleary, scleary@vof.org.
Preserve staff have been for working for several years with Trout Unlimited’s Trout-in-the-Classroom program and a consortium of Northern Virginia public school students and their teachers to restore a section of Catharpin Creek’s headwaters, that lies within the boundaries of the Bull Run Mountains Natural Area Preserve. Along with these restorations, we have been reintroducing the native brook trout and found consistent evidence that these trout are surging the summer season (the most difficult time of year for this cold water loving fish). This success has made us one of the closest populations of trout to Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately, just as another promising trout release season was upon us, the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down school facilities. Realizing that students would not be able to release the trout (or properly care for them in the interim), all parties jumped into concerted action and we were able to coordinate a series of emergency releases.
Shout-out to the heroic effort of our teachers and students. Below are a series of photographs capturing Thomas Jefferson High School (TJHS) students releasing their trout just before school closures. Gro Preschool teachers came out after school closures for another emergency release to get their well-raised brookies out of their empty classrooms and into Catharpin.
Thomas Jefferson HS students release their brook trout into Catharpin Creek at Release Site #4
Thomas Jefferson High School brook trout waiting to be released
Large and in-charge brook trout getting ready to be released
Gro Preschool teachers release their brook trout into Catharpin
TJHS students conducted their monthly stream monitoring survey after their trout release. This survey is an ongoing effort started by TJHS students and Dr. Strickler, providing excellent long-term stream data for the Preserve (and a great research project for the students).
Dr. Stickler identifies macro-invertebrates as his students continue stream monitoring
A mayfly larvae found during the student's macro-invertebrate survey
In 2017, outfitted with safety goggles, work gloves, steel-toed boots, and fire-retardant jumpsuits, a group of Radford students set fire to an 8-acre grassy field on the university’s Selu Conservancy nature preserve. They hope to do it again this year, and again three years after that.
Their efforts are part of the fire ecology class offered by Radford’s biology department in partnership with the Virginia Department of Forestry (DOF). Students who enroll in Fire Ecology also enroll in two other courses, Firefighter Training and Introduction to Wildland Fire Behavior, offered through DOF online. The combined courses train students to conduct a prescribed burn—a fire purposely set and then extinguished to help warm-season grasses thrive. The practice helps maintain habitat for native bobwhite quail.
“It’s a unique and high-impact educational experience for the students and a valuable partnership with local agencies,” says Josh Nease, academic program manager at Selu. “Prescribed burns are an effective land management tool, deploying an important natural process in a controlled environment.”
Selu’s grassland habitat occupies a fraction of the total 380 acres of the preserve, which hugs a deep bend along the Little River. In addition to the quail’s grassland habitat, there are wooded upland areas for the rare natural heritage plant species, Paxistima canbyi (Canby’s mountain lover) and Viola walteri (the prostrate blue violet). Native animal populations also benefit from Selu’s wild spaces.
In order to ensure protection of these natural resources over the long term, the Radford University Foundation donated a conservation easement on the property to VOF in 2011. The easement requires the maintenance of 300-foot riparian buffer along the bank of the Little River that runs along the edge of the property, delineates a no-build area to protect the rare plant species, and specifies that the forested portions of the property be kept in their natural state.
Providing innovative hands-on learning opportunities for Radford students is just one of the many roles Selu plays in the community. Free and open to the public for hiking and canoeing along the Little River (call the conservancy coordinator ahead of time to arrange access), the site also acts as an outdoor classroom for area elementary students and hosts a log-cabin like retreat center; a multi-purpose event space known as the Barn; and the adjacent Silo, the conservancy’s observatory.
Selu’s river frontage includes a canoe launch available to the public by appointment.
“It’s a busy place,” Nease says. “In spring of 2019 we had almost 1500 student visitors from 13 different programs and departments.”
The Wilderness First-Responder class provides students with another first-hand learning experience, this time to students of the Recreation, Parks and Tourism program, who get to practice providing emergency medical attention in a wilderness setting, where people needing urgent care might be far from a hospital or other healthcare facility.
Selu is an integral part of the university’s Appalachian Studies Program as well, says Ricky Cox, who teaches courses in Folklore, American Literature, and Appalachian Studies. He also coordinates programs at the Farm, the reconstructed 1930s farmstead at Selu, dedicated in 2006. When the property was donated to the university by the Bowles family, he states, “Appalachian Studies proposed developing a living history field trip destination that would complement other historical resources that already existed further east, such as Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, and the Museum of Frontier Culture in Staunton.”
“We thought that interpreting the 1930s would provide a link where elementary school students could see the shift from subsistence to market agriculture, how we went from cooking on a hearth to a cooking in a microwave, and how radio and 78 rpm recordings that became popular in rural America in the 1930s began to move us from entertainment that was exclusively homemade toward modern sources that are anything but.”
Area elementary school students learn about rural life in the 1930s at Selu’s reconstructed farmstead.
Now, tours of the Farm (officially the C.E. Richardson Appalachian Heritage Education Park) take the students through a rural home from the period, demonstrating what cooking, eating, and entertainment would have been like for a typical farm family at the time.
Last fall, a total of 529 elementary school students from Montgomery and Wythe Counties and the City of Radford and 179 Radford University students toured the house. In the past, tour interpreters have come from a pool of non-student volunteers which includes active and retired faculty, retired schoolteachers, and alumni.
More recently, Cox says, Radford Teacher Education students enrolled in a human development course have joined in, along with advanced Recreation Parks and Tourism students.
“They get actual teaching experience in a very structured situation,” Cox says. “They develop a 20-minute presentation that they give, often with a partner, to several groups of 5-12 kids. They log contact hours and turn in assignments illustrating what they’ve been learning about developmental stages they are studying in the classroom or how to manage tours at a cultural site.”
Cox, who is retiring in May, hopes that Selu’s model of collaboration between preservation and education can be emulated at other institutions that own or have access to conserved land. James Madison University, for example, inherited a 37-acre parcel under easement held by the North American Land Trust and recently sent a group out to see Selu’s programs at work.
“It’s a win-win,” Cox states. “The Farm is able to serve the university by providing a real-world instructional experience for its students, and the number of people who get to experience the beauty and history of this place is much expanded.”
More information on Selu’s programs and facilities can be found on Radford’s Selu webpage.
To make appointments for hiking or canoeing access, contact Selu’s coordinator at selu@radford.edu, or call 540-831-5933.
Janet and her mother, Agnes Gayle Harris, going for a joy ride on their New Holland tractor to Janet's sister's neighboring farm in 2007.
When she decided to take on her family farm, Janet Gayle Harris proudly stepped in as the latest in a line of strong women who had run Aspen Grove in some capacity since the Civil War.
If she ran into problems early on as a female farmer in a man’s world, she thought of her twice great-grandmother, Lucy Went Pratt, widowed and on the property with her four daughters when the Vermont Brigade took over the nearby fields to set up a camp hospital in the winter of 1862-1863. To protect her livestock, Lucy moved the hogs up to the yard, just outside of the lean-to kitchen. Once, when a soldier got too close, he was run off by boiling water taken straight from the stove and poured onto him from the kitchen window.
After the war, pieces of the 224-acre farm were passed down or sold among family on Janet’s maternal side. Bowens, Pratts, Rollinses, Gayles and Harrises (with a Crump in the mix) sold each other parcels and bought them back as fortunes shifted.
By the time Janet and her sister inherited an interest in Aspen Grove from their mother, 81 acres of the original farm remained under their ownership. “Putting the farm back together was on my bucket list,” Janet says. As she’s reunited much of the original property under her own ownership though inheritances and purchases from uncles and a cousin, she’s also grown it 368 acres.
More than half of this is protected by easements with VOF, and she’s not done yet. “I’m going to homogenize protections among all the parcels,” she says.
Cattle are fenced out of the forested buffers Janet and Agnes planted on Muddy Creek.
Even before placing an easement on the property, she and her mother, Agnes, installed riparian buffers on the creek that once ran between their farm and Agnes’ brother’s place. They planted close to 4,000 trees, Janet says, and now that Janet has inherited her uncle’s land, the buffer runs on either side of the creek through the middle of her property for over a mile, extending 35’ outward from the tops of the banks.
Harris’s stewardship of Aspen Grove also makes it an educational resource for others. She hosts farm field days for various agencies, including the Virginia Grasslands and Forage Council, which sponsors pasture walks to teach farmers about conservation grazing.
But the most far-reaching educational event happens in April of every year, when 140 4th-graders from the King George Public School District descend on the farm for a day of hands-on learning. The wetland areas of Muddy Creek and Black Swamp Creek on the property make an ideal outdoor classroom for learning about watersheds.
“They have a wetland scavenger hunt and do chemical testing on the streams,” Harris says. “They see how the waters run and where they go. It’s a real-life view of the watershed, which is so important.
“The only way we’re going to preserve these areas is to get the next generation out and onto the land,” she adds, “so it’s nice when I run into a child who recognizes me because they remember coming to the farm and learning about the creek.”
The easement helps ensure that the youngest generation of Harris’s family remains connected to the land as well. “My goal was to protect it,” she says. “I have a great-nephew who’s 15 and involved in 4-H, and a great-niece who’s four.”
Harris’s great-niece is still too young to know whether she will be the next generation of women to help protect the farm. “She likes cows, so we’ll see!” Harris says. “Whatever the next generation decides to do with it, the easement means it’s protected, and that’s what counts.”
The Preserve at Bull Run Mountains has seven miles of hiking trails open to the public every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday throughout the year. The Preserve’s public access trailhead is located on Beverley Mill Drive, right next to the historic Beverley-Chapman’s Mill (view-able from I-66). Around noon on Saturday, February 22nd, three adolescents (two males and one female) around 15 or 16 years of age, were witnessed desecrating and causing significant damage to a historic homestead site known as the Corum House. This historic homesite sits directly off the back end of the highly used Fern Hollow Loop (green loop) and is an important relic that tells the story of the Preserve’s diversely peopled past – a story we are looking forward to sharing with our community.
Corum House as it sits along the Fern Hollow Loop
Some of the damage inflicted on the siding and beams of the Corum House
VOF has spent the last year working closely with local archaeologists and historians to research and document the Preserve’s cultural holdings in the hopes that we can incorporate this newly gained knowledge into a complete suite of interpretive signage and educational programming – and develop effective conservation protocols to protect them from further decay.
Cultural History Project at VOF's Preserve at Bull Run Mountains
VOF staff embarked on a long-term Cultural History Project in early 2019 that aims to understand, properly characterize, and begin communicating the story of our cultural resources and the diversely peopled past they represent within the Bull Run Mountains. As you hike through the South Section trail network, you may notice cultural features right along the trails; cemeteries, house structures like the Corum House, fence lines, evidence of past agricultural use, and anthropogenic manipulation of the landscape. VOF staff have been working to discover and map all these features, both in the South Section and throughout the rest of the Preserve. This mapping exercise is conducted to first discover what historic cultural sites are within the boundaries of the preserve, and then guide staff and affiliated volunteers and organizations to begin characterizing these sites and discovering their histories.
Site characterization involves a myriad of different research techniques that includes working with contracted individuals, volunteering groups such as the Archaeological Society of Virginia, and local schools to search through historical records, deeds, oral histories, and conduct field mapping of each site. What is all this work set to accomplish? We are aiming to discover the story of the people who called the mountain home, how they lived, and their interactions with their environment and others living on the mountain and present these stories to the public in honest, open, and empowering ways. We are first focusing on sites within the Preserve, and the South Section specifically, then hope to eventually uncover the histories of sites throughout the entirety of the Bull Run Mountains.
The Corum House, standing alongside the Fern Hollow Loop (green loop), is one of the sites in the South Section we have begun to characterize. Through our work on another homestead site close by, we have discovered a multi-layered and intertwined history between the Corum House and this homestead site. The Corum House’s location on the Preserve is marked by site number “8” on the trail map below.
Publicly accessible trails at the Preserve open Fridays - Sundays year-round
The story begins with Moses Robinson, an African American gentleman who owned four acres on what is now Preserve property in the late 1800s/early 1900s. We do not yet know the extent of Moses Robinson’s ownership of the 4acre parcel, but we do know that he cleared the land in 1904. Evidence of this clearing is perceptible on the landscape today. VOF staff collaborated with local archaeologist Patrick O’Neill and the Archaeological Society of Virginia to map and research the Moses Robinson parcel. Through site mapping and characterization of what we know as Moses Robinson’s four acres, we found a house foundation, what appears to be a family cemetery, and evidence of clearing of the land. This cemetery, sitting at the edge of a rocky outcropping, is thought to be the Robinson and Corum family cemetery.
Moses Robinson married Kate Woodson Robinson in 1902. The record of her death in 1951 notes she was buried in a home cemetery. If the Robinsons were still living on this 4acre parcel, it is likely she is buried in the cemetery on the bluff. Of Moses and Kate’s nine children, one of their daughters, Mary Jane Robinson, married Beverley Richard Corum in 1917, thus establishing the Robinson and Corum connection. Beverley Corum purchased 10 acres of land near the Moses Robinson property sitting on Catlett’s Branch.
Based on these records and known geographic location of these sites, the house that still stands today on the Fern Hollow Loop is believed to be the house of the Corum Family. Records indicate that one of Mary Jane and Beverley’s children, Mabel Corum, was buried in a home cemetery. It is believed that she is buried in the same cemetery on the bluff in the Robinson property. VOF’s work, with the invaluable help of Patrick O’Neill and the Archaeological Society of Virginia, has unearthed the discovery of an intertwined story of two families living and shaping the landscape of the mountains. No longer do we have a home structure along our trail system with hidden origins. We have discovered a potential background to this site, linked with two families over geographic space and time.
Recently, VOF staff had the pleasure to present some of this Cultural History Project at the Small Museum Association (SMA) conference focused on “Museums as Catalysts of Social Change” which honored the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage movement. Through this presentation, staff were able to provide information on the work we have been conducting, the discoveries we have made thus far, and the plans we have for creating infrastructure and programming to give these past peoples a voice and rightful representation within our Preserve’s larger history. One of the valuable aspects of presenting at this conference was the ability to present to professionals that are well-versed in representation and historical research. VOF staff is trying to extend the reach of our information and increase knowledge of our Preserve, and the historic sites held within, so we may encourage further collaboration for research into our sites.
The vandalism of the Corum House is a significant setback, both in its destruction and in the potential loss of historical data. Witnesses have provided descriptions, trail camera data is being reviewed, and the police have been notified. Additional security measures will be put in place.
We are continuously thankful to all the members of the community who ensure the good news always outweighs the bad. With that in mind, if anyone does have any further information regarding this recent incident or are interested in helping with our cultural history project, please reach out to Preserve Manager, Joe Villari at jvillari@vof.org or 571-438-8957.
If you are interested in joining VOF staff and volunteers to repair the damage done to the Corum House and contribute to trail maintenance at the Preserve, please join us on Sunday, March 15th at 9:00am as we utilize our monthly trail workday to repair the Corum House. If you are interested in joining in on the workday, please contact Preserve Technician Summers Cleary at scleary@vof.org.
Following a two-year outreach effort that gathered input from dozens of community organizations, leaders, and descendent families, the Enrichmond Foundation unveiled its master restoration plan for Historic Evergreen Cemetery in Richmond on February 29.
The plan, which is available for download on Enrichmond’s website, provides a framework for decision making and focuses on how to balance the needs of historic and natural resources with modern day requirements and regulations. It outlines 32 strategies for the effort, covering topics such as records management, site stabilization, environmental protection, mobility, infrastructure, accessibility, storytelling, and security. Altogether, the plan estimates it will cost roughly $19 million to implement the strategies.
Enrichmond unveiled the plan at an event at Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in downtown Richmond. Speakers included Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney along with representatives of Enrichmond, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, and the National Park Service.
“These spaces and the remains of those buried there are assets to our community—treasures that help us remember the discriminatory challenges these souls faced when they were alive and while they rested,” said Mayor Stoney. “It is long overdue that we protect these spaces … and it is our commitment as a city that we will step up and do our part.”
“We have followed in the footsteps of some amazing people,” said Enrichmond Executive Director John Sydnor. “They have been the organizations and individuals who have preserved and protected these places before and hopefully afterward as we move forward on our master plan.”
VOF Executive Director Brett Glymph added, “A true understanding of American history and our democracy cannot be understood without places like Evergreen that record the story of a people whose struggle for freedom and equality is at the heart of our democracy.”
VOF Preserve Manager, Joe Villari, and Preserve Technician, Summers Cleary, traveled to College Park, Maryland earlier this month to present research into the cultural narrative of mountain life at the Preserve at the 2020 Small Museum Association Conference, February 16th – 18th.
The Small Museum Association (SMA) conference focused on “Museums as Catalysts of Social Change” honoring the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage movement. Joe and Summers had the pleasure of presenting their talk “Making History Our-story: An On-going Case Study from an Open-air Museum”. This talk offered a brief glimpse into some of the cultural history work staff have completed over the past few years, and detailed the approaches and efforts made to work towards greater diversity, representation and inclusion at the Preserve.
More specifically, this hour-long talk focused on using the Preserve, it’s seven miles of publicly accessible hiking trails, interpretive signage, and ArcGIS StoryMaps to allow visitors to explore the cultural narrative of mountain life in a non-traditional museum setting. The narrative features stories of freed enslaved peoples, black families, women across the mountain, and families who have cultivated the landscape leaving artifacts behind such as cemeteries, low rock walls, house sites, and in some cases mysterious stories and legends.
Please peruse our slideshow presentation from the SMA conference exploring our current work and vision for this project as we continue to push the Preserve and its efforts into a more inclusive future.
Click the button above to view our entire slideshow presentation from the SMA conference.
In recent years, VOF Preserve staff have begun to focus on building capacity and operating as an open-air museum and living laboratory, resulting in increased archeological inquiries. Despite much improvement and forward momentum, the Preserve still lacks adequate publicly accessible outreach facilities or infrastructure – though VOF staff are in the process of changing this. There are still other obstacles to overcome to encourage visitation from a more diverse user base, one that truly represents the demographically diverse nature of nearby populations. VOF staff presented this case of punctuated equilibrium to the SMA community and shared struggles in presenting a diversely peopled past to a (hopefully) increasingly diverse user base.
Opportunities such as presenting at the SMA conference enable Preserve staff to receive invaluable feedback and education on how to best make the Preserve into an open-air museum that promotes inclusivity, representation, and diversity.
The 1880s cabin at Woods Hole has been refurbished to provide AT hikers a welcome break from the hardships of the trail.
Neville Harris lives in a secluded cabin in the woods, but she has company nine months out of the year. It’s even busy at her place from mid-April to mid-June, peak season on the Appalachian Trail, when as many as 20 or more trail-weary hikers might show up at her Woods Hole Hostel, where they can sleep on real mattresses, take hot showers, and eat home cooked meals.
The guests first started coming in 1986, when Neville’s grandparents, Tillie and Roy Wood, began allowing hikers a free one-night rest stop on their wooded retreat. When hikers wandered down from the trail, one-half mile away, the Woods would let them sleep in the bunk house or camp on the property. After Roy’s death in 1987, Tillie made the 8-hour drive from her home in Georgia every year to be there for hiker season. A stay at Woods Hole wouldn’t have been complete without her $3.50 home cooked breakfast, which saw travelers off in the morning.
Neville and her sister Jere would often spend summers on the property with Roy and Tillie, who wanted to see their haven preserved. The year before Roy died, the two girls, aged eight and ten, overheard their grandparents talking about donating the property to a conservation organization. Neville’s mother, Mary Jo, remembers, “They came to me in tears, saying ‘Please don’t let them give the cabin away!’ So my parents willed it to me instead, and I promised them I would never sell it.”
Tillie and Mary Jo decided to place a conservation easement on the 80 acres, which a forester estimated had not been timbered in over one hundred years. The stands of mature red oaks and other native hardwoods were some of the oldest the forester had seen, Mary Jo says. “He told me we could send a child to college on what we could make from timbering, but we didn’t care. We just wanted [Tillie] to know it would be protected.””
The easement was finalized in November 2006, barely a year before Tillie died. It contains provisions that protect the viewshed of the Appalachian Trail, prohibit timbering, and delineate protective buffers around the streams on the property.
“She was immensely proud of it,” Mary Jo says.
The raised-bed gardens behind the bunkhouse provide many of the vegetables for communal meals at the hostel.
Neville started running the hostel in 2009. She and her husband at the time took on the work together, installing a raised-bed garden, a gravity-run irrigation system from a spring, and an outdoor wood furnace to heat the cabin and water. They also made the 13-bed bunkhouse a little warmer by enclosing it.
On her own now, Neville continues to move the hostel forward. She has expanded the lodging possibilities beyond the bunkhouse to satisfy a range of budgets, providing three private rooms in the renovated and expanded 1880s-era cabin, and glamping tents with electricity for those who want to stay outside. She enlists help in preparing breakfast and dinner from anyone who wants to participate in the communal-style meals, cooked from vegetables grown either in her own garden or on her Amish neighbors’ farm.
Hikers pitch in to help Neville prepare a meal.
Neville says, “There are a hundred different ways people help out. Some folks just love volunteering and have amazing skills.”
Additional amenities include impromptu yoga classes (Neville spent some time in India), a massage (she is a licensed massage therapist) or just the opportunity to chill out in one of the many beautiful spots on the property, all maintained by Neville with hikers who give her a hand.
It may seem like a lot, but how she does it isn’t a mystery to her family, who say that Neville has been preparing for the job her whole life. Mary Jo says, “She’s created something that we’re all very proud of. I love telling people that I have a daughter who runs a hostel on the Appalachian trail.”
For Neville, it’s worth it just to get to live in the woods. She cites Henry David Thoreau, the nineteenth-century poet and philosopher who wrote about his experiment in simple living in his 1854 book, Walden, or Life in the Woods.
“I read Thoreau in college and I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she says. “Now, because my grandmother and mother conserved Woods Hole with an easement, I get to live in the woods. But I realize not everybody has this opportunity, and I like to share it.”
For more details, rates and reservations, go to the Woods Hole Hostel website.
