UNDER I-64
When we travel Intestate 64 crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains from the Piedmont section of Virginia into the Shenandoah Valley, we actually move above the site of an historic landmark known as the “Rockfish Inn.”
Thomas Jefferson used to visit the place from his home in nearby Albemarle County and it was he who invited a group of twenty-five men (some records say “twenty-one”) to gather there in August of 1818. That conference was called to decide where the newly planned university for the Commonwealth of Virginia was to be built. The had three choices. The new educational facility would be built at Staunton, Lexington or Charlottesville.
If one judges by the final vote of this group of community leaders it seems obvious there was little doubt about where the new school was to go.. Jefferson called the meeting. Jefferson chaired the conference. Jefferson wanted the “Central”site chosen – the one within sight of Jefferson's estate “Monticello” estate.
The old inn where the conference group met was located about three miles of Waynesboro . I was just down from the entrance to the Swanannoa estate, if you remember that ornate dwelling, also atop Afton Mountain. It had been built around 1770 out of durable local and it served a clientele who trekked across the Blue Ridge at this Rockfish Gap point to visit some of the springs, health spas, and summer places to the west.
The Inn as destroyed by fire April 4, 1909, and when Interstate 64 was constructed paralleling State Route 250 and becoming one and the same at the mountain top point, with the scenic route “Skyline Drive” where it becomes the “B;ue Ridge Parkway” bridged across the momentarily melded I-64,250 and Drives. When the Interstate portion was added the old site of the Rockfish Inn of Jefferson's day was graded downward and room made for the required fans of Entrance and Exit ramps needed to serve the, now, numerous businesses at the top of the mountain.
The conference members in 1818 may well have enjoyed the panoramic views from either side of the mountain, or they may have visited two well-know springs in the area – one called “Chalybeate” and the other “Freestone”. The meetings themselves were not exactly clean runaways for the “Central.” Both the delegations from Lexington and Staunton tried several times, to have the meetings adjourned to their own towns, but such efforts were thwarted. Mr. Jefferson voted in favor of the “Central” location as did a neighbor of his by the name of Madison and fourteen other delegates they had invited. The three delegates from Lexington – Mr.Breckenridge, Mr. Pendlelton and Mr. J .McTaylor voted in favor of the Lexington site where Washington College was already functioning. They went home disappointed, as did Mr. Archibald Stuart and Mr. Thomas Wilson – they having voted in favor of the Staunton location.
Somewhat later, after our Civil War, “Rockfish Inn” was host to another well-know-known man who was on his way from his from his home in northern Virginia to start a new job as President of Washington College - Robert E. Lee.
A.L.M. February 25, 2003 [c523wds]
