Below you rolls “the mighty James,” the father of Virginia’s history,
along the banks of which Richmond had her beginning. In 1645 Fort
Charles was erected here at the falls of the James to protect the
Tidewater settlers from the incursions of the Indians. The cross,
planted on rugged boulders or river-jacks from the James, was erected
here by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities in
memory of the valiant little group of explorers, who landed on an island
below this point on May 24, 1607.
Across the ravine on the extreme right is the State penitentiary, ably
run along modern lines.
Bringing your eyes along the crest of the same hill sloping down towards
the river, you will see Hollywood Cemetery, where lie buried two
Presidents of the United States, James Monroe and John Tyler; the
President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis; General
J. E. B. Stuart, Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, “the pathfinder of
the seas;” Fitzhugh Lee (General R. E. Lee is buried in Lexington,
Virginia); George E. Pickett and some 18,000 Confederate soldiers,
including the Virginians who fell in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.
Immediately beneath Gamble’s Hill curve are the remains of the once
vital Kanawha Canal, Virginia’s earliest great westward transportation
system, of which George Washington was the first president in 1785.
Across the canal is the Tredegar Company, iron manufacturers, which has
rounded out more than a century of service, having furnished munitions
in the country’s last four wars. Here was rolled the armor-plate for the
“Merrimac,” which, with the “Monitor,” made history in Hampton Roads in
the first battle between iron-clads.
Leaving the park we pass on our left a remarkable structure, known as
Pratt’s castle, constructed in the 1850’s. ¶ _Proceed on Fourth Street
to Canal, right on Canal to Fifth, left on Fifth to Main._