Jamestown Ferry - History

History

The Jamestown Ferry service was privately established in 1925. The Commonwealth of Virginia acquired it and the Department of Transportation (VDOT) assumed operations in 1945. It runs it as a state service.

The ferryboat Captain John Smith made the first automobile-ferry crossing of the James River on February 26, 1925. The privately owned business was founded by Captain Albert F. Jester. After the Captain John Smith was retired in the early 1950s, the deckhouse was put into adaptive use. For another 50 years, it was used as a private waterside cottage, perched on pilings in the Elizabeth River near Portsmouth. In 2003, the deckhouse was removed and donated to a preservation group in Surry County.

Read more about this topic:  Jamestown Ferry

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
    There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
    —Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)

    “The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
    —Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    “While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)