Saving what is left

T. Gibson Hobbs’ life’s work and his life’s passion had something in common — both stopped while they were still in progress.

His passion, the James River & Kanawha Canal, was laid down as far as Botetourt County before it was badly damaged by the Civil War and rendered moot by the railroads. Thus, George Washington’s grand plan of an inland waterway linking the Potomac and Ohio rivers simply stopped, an instant anachronism that gradually crumbled over time.

Hobbs stumbled upon the remains of the canal in the some 30 years ago, and began taking photographs and notes. With the help of Lynchburg historian and publisher Nancy Marion, that evolved into a book, but he died in 2005 before it became a reality.

Unlike the case of the canal, however, Hobbs’ 166-page celebration of the James & Kanawha pushed on to its completion. The book finally came out last week, published by Blackwell Press (BlackwellPress.net), and I think its author would have liked the result.

He had suffered a heart attack during the mid-’70s and was forbidden to return to his job at C.B. Fleet until after an enforced period of convalesence. His doctor advised him to walk, and on one of those jaunts near Mount Athos, he discovered a badly decomposed section of the old canal. He was first curious, then entranced, and finally hooked.

“I called Gibson one day,” Marion recalled, “just to ask if he had any historic photographs I could scan. It turned out that he had over 1,000, almost all of them of the canal.”

And there was more. When Marion paid a visit to Hobbs’ home, she found stacks of legal pads citing the number of and the physical location depicted in every slide. In a closet, she came across talks on the canal that Hobbs had given to a number of schools and historic groups in Central Virginia.

“That’s when I started thinking seriously about a book,” she said.

Eventually, Hobbs became not only one of the reigning experts on the old canal, but its patron saint. Despite his advanced years, he spent countless hours cutting brush and digging down to buried stone to reveal more and more of the old waterway to 20th and 21st century eyes. After awhile, he managed to entice friends, civic organizations and youth groups to start doing the same.

“He also had a very detailed map of the canal,” Marion said, “that I was going to use as the centerfold of the book, just as it was. Then I noticed that he had written telephone numbers and comments about landowners on there, so I decided to do it over myself.”

The first shovels-full of Virginia clay were hoisted on the canal’s behalf in 1835, kick-starting the project’s “First Division” from the Maiden’s Adventure Dam near Richmond to Scottsville. The task that chief engineer Claudius Crozet and first James River & Kanawha Canal Company president Joseph Carrington Cabell had taken on was enormous — a canal 50 feet wide at the surface, 30 feet across at the bottom and five feet deep, stretching ultimately for several hundred miles.

Hobbs’ book — titled, simply, “The Canal on the James: An Illustrated Guide to the James River and Kanawha Canal” —- goes on to describe not only the challenges met by workmen and engineers at ground level, but intrigue and infighting among the men who pulled the levers of power that guided (or, at times, handicapped) the project.

There are accounts of what it was like to travel on the river in a canal boat, and connections to the modern batteau festival and other efforts to reclaim history.
The last 70-plus pages of “The Canal on the James” are filled with maps and photographs — not all of Hobbs’ 1,000-plus slides made the cut, but the visual record is considerable.

“Gibson’s goal,” former Lynchburg Museum director Tom Ledford wrote in a preface, “was the preservation of every piece of evidence he could find that illuminated the history of the canal. He wanted this book to find its way into the hands of everyone who shared his interest and curiosity because he understood that public knowledge is the best way to save what is left.”

“The Canal on the James: An Illustrated Guide to the James River and Kanawha Canal” is currently available in a number of local outlets, including Givens Books, the Lynchburg Visitors’ Center and the bookstore at Randolph College. The annual James River Batteau Festival is slated to start Saturday.