From longtime Native American settlements to English exploration to American watermen, the York River has a long history a Watermen’s Museum project seeks to preserve and interpret.
Museum staff and volunteers began working in earnest on the York River Stewardship Project last summer with the help of numerous other agencies, with an eye on accomplishing two major goals: developing a repository of educational materials for students and landing a state designation for the river as a scenic and historic waterway.
“We’re trying to create a sense of stewardship for the river by teaching school kids and reaching out and working with the communities to not only teach the history of the York River and the Chesapeake Bay but work with them to learn their stories,” said Michael Steen, the museum’s director of education.
Key to the stewardship project is getting the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation to label the York River as a scenic and historic waterway, thereby including it in Virginia’s Scenic Rivers Program.
“By making people care about river and show the river, we can build stewardship,” he said. “If folks get out on the water and enjoy the ecology and learn the history, they’re more likely to take care of it in the future.”
Inclusion in that program opens lands along the river to new streams of grant money and officially recognizes the river as a valuable natural resource. It does not create any new controls for land use or open the river to greater oversight from the state.
“[The designation] is more of a stamp on the map, so when folks are looking for some place to go in Virginia and they look for scenic rivers and historic sites, this will pop up on that search,” Steen said.
The project also seeks to bolster the network of blueways — trails over water with launch points and set routes for non-motorized boaters to use — that runs throughout the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Steen said linking the disparate trails into one unified grid could mean more interest from tourists.
“This is the time to start working together and build that synergy and have the designation created,” he said. “We could apply for grants to develop marketing pieces to market the whole area. We could develop a map-type piece.”
DCR requires local groups like the York River Stewardship Project to work with localities adjoining the river to apply to have state employees come and analyze the river for inclusion in the program. Those employees produce a report, after which a local member of the General Assembly can sponsor legislation seeking to have the designation bestowed upon the river.
The other major component of the project seeks to boost the available educational resources detailing the river. To achieve that end, the museum has been conducting experimental programs with area students — including from Williamsburg-James City County Schools and the York County School Division — to try to forge a package of educational materials and experiences for use by schools.
The experimental programs bring students to the museum, where they get to go out on the shoreline and use scientific equipment to gauge water quality and types of wildlife in the river. Nets are also provided so the kids can try to catch fish and then talk about what kind of fish they have caught.
Other educational programs involve incorporating the history of Native American settlements and English explorers.
“We use hands-on analysis of [replica] artifacts to talk about how the Indians would have caught fish and would have made canoes here to use on the rivers,” he said. “[Students also learn about] fishing spears and traps [and get to try their hands at building a fish trap].”
As part of its initiative to develop curriculum for use in schools, the museum will send staff and volunteers to interview people up and down the York River, from West Point to its mouth on the Chesapeake Bay, to gather their stories, memories and feelings about the river. That information will also be available for researchers studying the area.
Those materials will help form a curriculum crafted to match requirements from the Virginia Department of Education and the Standards of Learning tests. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and Colonial Williamsburg also offer curricula for students designed to meet school requirements.
Christopher Newport University’s Public History Department is also helping to forge material for the project’s curriculum. The materials will detail the lives of people on the river throughout the ages, from Native Americans to contemporary watermen who turn to the river for their livelihood.
“We want to be able to give it to school teachers and let them use it in classrooms for free,” Steen said.
The museum’s work with the York River also includes an initiative with archaeologists to resurvey the status of the sunken British fleet in the river. The fleet was ordered sunk to block American and French naval forces by Lord Cornwallis, the British commander at Yorktown in its final days before its fall in 1781.
Steen said he wants to have the educational resources in place by fall for schools to access online and at the museum. In the coming months, he hopes the localities along the river will submit a letter to DCR to come and conduct the study which is needed before the General Assembly can consider legislation to bestow the designation upon the river.
The museum is working with several regional entities to advance the project, including CNU, JYF, the National Park Service and the Mariners Museum.
To generate interest in the project, the museum is also hosting a series of open houses. An open house is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at the museum and is open to the public.
