Changes Over Time

Dutch Gap’s history reflects the long importance of the river and the partnership of land and water use. In the 1500s, Powhatan Indians fished and carried furs, food, and other trade items in dugout canoes. In 1611, Sir Thomas Dale and 300 settlers built the Citie of Henricus as Virginia’s frontier moved westward. In 1614, America’s first English hospital, Mt Malady, was established, and John Rolfe introduced tobacco, launching Virginia’s first successful economic venture. In 1619, America’s first college, The College of Henricus, was chartered. In the 1620s, early settlers used shallops to navigate shallow waters to nearby settlements and plantations, and in the 1700s colonists turned to batteaux, sloops, and barges for water transportation. In 1781, Benedict Arnold and British troops captured Virginia’s navy along the southern tip of the Dutch Gap peninsula. In the 1800s, packets carried cargo from Richmond to Baltimore, New York, and Boston, and by 1855 more than 2,600 boats and ships entered and departed from the Richmond docks. In 1864, Gen. Benjamin Butler’s Federal forces began digging a channel near the original 1611 Citie site to eliminate the large loop in the James that contained Confederate land batteries, and under constant fire Federal soldiers labored 144 days on the channel. In 1865, the channel project was abandoned when a bulkhead explosion blasted earth back into the newly dug causeway. In 1871, the U.S. Government completed dredging and opened the channel, turning the peninsula into an island with tidal and non-tidal marshlands, and in 1872 the steamship Sylvester became the first commercial vessel to use the new channel. In the 1930s, the Army Corp of Engineers extended the channel, eliminating another loop in the river, and from the 1930s to the 1960s sand and gravel mining created a tidal lagoon. In 1997, the Dutch Gap Conservation Area was created as a regional partnership providing historical, environmental, and recreational activities to thousands of visitors each year. Today, motorboats, jet skis, and other recreational craft use the narrow channels of the James alongside tugboats, barges, and large ocean-going vessels hauling international cargo to and from the Port of Richmond.

Virginia · United States