Okay, grab your time machine, be it pedal, gas, hybrid or all-electric powered, and bring a friend. We’ll gather up at Ivy and head toward the Skyline Drive—just 16, 17 miles or so. This time, however, we’ll ride on the old Mountain Road; some called it the Mountain Ridge Road. Later, it was called Three Notch’d. There will be plenty to see along our way, and the miles will be peppered with some name-dropping.
The idea for the route we’re taking was hatched in the year 1733. That idea grew legs in 1734, when Peter Jefferson (yes, the future president’s father, who lived east of Charlottesville at Shadwell) was hired by Goochland County officials to mark off a route which, in a handful of years, would connect the fledgling town of Richmond with Staunton and the Shenandoah Valley.
Goochland County Court issued a Road Order in 1737, “for Michael Wood[s] to clear a road ‘From the Blue Ledge [Blue Ridge] down to Ivy Creek.’” Our ride, though, will be taken in reverse direction (east-to-west) of Woods’ appointed task, which began at the westerly point later named Woods’ Gap, present-day Jarman’s Gap.
At Ivy, we immediately turn off of Ivy Road (U.S. Route 250) onto Morgantown Road (SR 738). One of the purposes for Route 250, in the 1930s, was to straighten out the curves and widen the roadways from the earlier days of road building. On our jaunt, we’re putting the curves back in, beginning on old Morgantown.
In 1818, Thomas Jefferson, the 75-year-old former U.S. President, rode his horse on the old roads to the Warm Springs Hotel in Bath County for a much deserved and needed rest. The Warm Springs’ heated, medicinal waters were known to alleviate rheumatism, of which he was suffering. From the Springs, he wrote to his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, and told her, “I have tried once today the delicious bath and shall do it twice a day hereafter.”
Unfortunately, Jefferson’s overindulgence in the heated waters lead to painful boils on his backside, and fever. Barely able to sit comfortably, the now somewhat invalid Jefferson was faced with a most painful trip back to Monticello. Days later, nearing Charlottesville and home, he was forced to stop for the night at Hardin’s Tavern at Morgantown, and sent a servant ahead to procure his carriage in order to better endure his remaining few miles to Monticello Mountain.
From Morgantown Road, we return briefly onto Rt. 250, downhill to its intersection with the eastern terminus of Brown’s Gap Turnpike (SR 680), where it runs concurrent with Old [original] Three Notch’d Road at Mechum’s River. The former railroad trestle here was burned along with the rail depot and supplies stored there during the Civil War in 1865. Just ahead on this pioneer roadbed are William Jarman’s c.1790 mill house and the stone foundation of his water-powered mill (razed by fire in 1951). The farm field in front of the miller’s house was filled with Civil War soldiers in 1862 when Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson executed his surprise troop maneuver via the railroad to begin the successful Valley Campaign.
At the top of the hill, turning from Brown’s Gap Turnpike onto Old Three Notch’d Road (SR 802), stands Mountain Plains Church which was organized by a Presbyterian congregation in 1747 and, since the 1830s, has been home to Mountain Plain Baptist Church. Historically African American c.1893 Mount Salem Baptist Gospel Church stands just up the road at the intersection of Old Three Notch’d Road and Three Notch’d Road (SR 240). Rt. 240 leads to downtown Crozet, established on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in 1876, and named for Col. Claudius Crozet, the French engineer who surveyed four railroad tunnels through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1850s.
In Crozet, at the intersection with Crozet Avenue, Three Notch’d Road appears to end, but we turn south onto SR 240, and, just down the street, turning at the intersection with Jarman’s Gap Road (SR 691), we point again toward the mountains. Ahead, southwest of the intersection with Half Mile Branch Road (SR 684), was the homestead of Irish immigrant Michael Woods (1684–1762). The Woods family and others crossed the nearby mountains coming from the Shenandoah Valley in 1734, establishing themselves as the first permanent settlers in the western reaches of Albemarle County (established 1744).
We continue west on Jarman’s Gap Road, being mindful of the narrower roadway, itself a subtle reminder that we are still following the route of Michael Woods’ c.1737 then-primitive road. In about one mile, at a sharp bend in the road, we continue onto SR 611, still named Jarman’s Gap Road.
Before you consider polishing off this time travel adventure, hear two voices that speak to what still lies on that portion of Three Notch’d Road ahead. The first is British officer Major Thomas Anbury. He was among the British and German prisoners of war, surrendered in the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Saratoga, NY, who were garrisoned at the Albemarle Barracks west of Charlottesville, from January 1779, until their removal from that camp to Maryland in 1780.
Regarding their march, under guard, Anbury wrote, in November 1780, “… About five weeks ago we began our march from Charlottesville Barracks, the army moving in the same manner as we left New England… We crossed the Blue Mountains, at Woods’ Gap, and though they are considerably loftier than those we crossed in Connecticut, termed the Green Mountains, we did not meet with so many difficulties; in short, you scarcely perceive, till you are upon the summit, that you are gaining an eminence, much less one that is of such a prodigious height, owing to the judicious manner that the inhabitants have made the road, which, by its winding, renders the ascent extremely easy.”
Now, please hear this writer’s cautionary present-day perspective. First, be forewarned that less than 400 yards ahead you must STOP at an at-grade active railroad crossing! When certain that your way is clear, proceed directly ahead. The public, state-maintained road (SR 611) to Jarman’s Gap proper is almost three miles in length. It is a dead-end, making the round trip six miles total. It has a narrow, graveled surface, is quite steep in places with no guard rails, and at the top is an “End State Maintenance” sign. Do not drive beyond that point. A short hike will take you to the old road’s crossing over Skyline Drive, inside Shenandoah National Park.
If you joined this adventure in your armchair, congratulations: you just skimmed across parts of four centuries of western Albemarle history! If you ever decide to take your machine out on the road, be prepared, stay safe, and, as always, be courteous to other time travelers you encounter along the way.
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