Beginning of the Survey: Friends of the Water Trail
An icy James River, part of the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail.
The book, of course, called for determining the cross sites.
My wife and I began motor-exploring and came up with general locations by 2007, enough to assemble a table in the book, and enough to supply a route for the reenactors to follow.
The book came out in 2008, Pat’s water trail became a national park, and in February 2009, I got a call from Charlie Stek. Charlie headed up a non-profit called Friends of the John Smith Water Trail.
“Where exactly are all those crosses?” he asked. “You’ve given a general description: ‘Blands Content, anywhere along the heights overlooking the Patapsco River,’ or ‘Aquia Creek, end of the 250-foot ridge between Garrisonville Road bridge and Cannon Creek.’ Fine, but, Ed, I want you to give us GPS coordinates. We want to put something on the ground.”
“Actually, Charlie, I think it’s Cannon Branch. But I don’t have any GPS coordinates. I’d have to …”
“Don’t worry. If you’ve got some time to spare, I want to send you back out there to get them.”
He furnished me with a car and two assistants, Tim Barrett and Jeff Allenby. We went on a weeklong odyssey. There were 27 crosses.