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Colonial Parkway
Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Virginia
W.A. R. Goodwin (left) and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. meet during restoration efforts at Williamsburg, 1928. (Colonial Williamsburg/CW) |
WILLIAMSBURG AND THE PARKS MOVEMENT
By the 1920s the dilapidated condition of Williamsburg was seen by some as a grave injustice to its historical role in the founding and growth of America. Enticed by the lobbying of W. A. R. Goodwin, rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. decided to finance the restoration of Virginia's colonial capital to its former glory. As a preservation project, the restoration of Williamsburg was a novel and ambitious undertaking which had significant ramifications for the development of Colonial National Historical Park.
Rockefeller had strong connections with the NPS through his conservation efforts in the American west and in Acadia National Park, Maine. In 1928 Kenneth Chorley, head of the Williamsburg restoration, laid out a plan to future NPS Director Horace Albright to create a national historic park incorporating the sites of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. Writing to Chorley the following year Albright stated, "I am so enthusiastic over this proposed historic park that I can hardly restrain my imagination."
I would like a new highway as a part of the new park, on a strip sufficiently wide to protect it by trees shutting out all conflicting modern development, this highway not to be a glaring modern pavement but as much as feasible giving the impression of an old-time road.
— Louis Cramton, 1929
The proposal had the support of Carson and the Virginia CDC, which was working closely with the NPS to establish Shenandoah National Park in the mid-1920s. During the fall of 1929, Carson organized a tour of the Tidewater region for Albright and U.S. Representative Louis Cramton (D-MI). Continued meetings between Carson, NPS officials and Cramton resulted in a bill calling for the creation of a Colonial National Monument to commemorate the "high ideals of the founding of American liberties." The "Cramton Bill" was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover in December 1930.
Top, left: Jones Mill Dam Pond, where BPR engineers rebuilt a colonial era mill dam to serve as a roadbed for the parkway, 1995. (Jack Boucher, HABS/HAER). Bottom, right: The newly completed parkway meanders gracefully through the Virginia woodland, 1930s. (COLO) |
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