Markers of History

Historic Jamestowne mark­ers
Foundations at Jamestown

Location: Historic Jametowne, Colonial NHP, Jamestown, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:55pm

Transcription of marker: The remains of Jamestown now lie buried beneath the ground. Archeologists have unearthed some of the known town site, but the orig­i­nal foun­da­tions of struc­tures would erode quickly if left exposed to wind, weather, and acid rain. The foun­da­tions have been reburied. The bricks you see here today are mod­ern repro­duc­tions of the orig­i­nal foun­da­tions underneath.

My impres­sions: This is another case of good place­ment. The marker is as you are enter­ing the park, so you learn this as you’re going in. In one sense, it’s dis­ap­point­ing not to be see­ing the actual struc­tures that were orig­i­nally built there. But by explain­ing that upfront, I under­stood why that’s the case and was able to enjoy the site with­out the frus­tra­tion that would have come if I’d found out later.

I also raise my eye­brow a bit at the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of “acid rain.” I can under­stand that it would make rain more of a haz­ard than “plain old rain,” I found it a lit­tle dis­tract­ing, espe­cially when paired with wind and weather: nat­ural phe­nom­ena. Because what I want to take away from this is a reminder that one has to be care­ful with irre­place­able his­tor­i­cal arti­facts. There’s the stereo­typ­i­cal image of some­body in an archives wear­ing gloves and gin­gerly han­dling old books and papers, but even the build­ing mate­ri­als here would dis­ap­pear if re-exposed to nature’s whims. Although I guess “plain old rain” would be included under “weather,” mak­ing acid rain a dif­fer­ent hazard…perhaps.