By Rob Hedelt
Pictured from left to right: (Front Row) Drew Gladwell, Whit Turner, Lisa Biever, Laurie Schlemm, Chip Minor, Tom Naughton. (Back Row) Val Olbrick, Margie Stevens, Duncan Griffiths, Rob Hedelt, John Meier, Alicen Hackney.
The Northern Neck Land Conservancy’s annual Boots and Barbecue event will be held in Essex County for the first time this year on October 4. This year’s event at historic Wheatland on the Rappahannock River includes all the delicacies and attractions visitors expect from the celebration of conservation.
There will be fried oysters, succulent barbecue, cool beverages, live music and presentations ranging from the Patawomeck Tribe making traditional eel pots to the Northern Neck Beekeepers sharing strategies and more.
But unique to this year’s gathering—where tickets are required and going fast—will be an interpretation of the history and important role played by the Saunder’s Steamboat Wharf, the last original steamboat landing in the Chesapeake.
Tours will be provided by the Steamboat Era Museum, which is based in Irvington. Museum Executive Director, Gus Kasper, and volunteers will be on hand to share details of the essential role that steamboats once played throughout the Chesapeake Bay region.
Kasper, who was kind enough one recent afternoon to give a short preview of the Boots presentation, noted that steamboats were once the nexus of trade and transportation in our region.
“Manufactured goods from places like Baltimore or Norfolk funneled in, while produce from farms ranging from cans of tomatoes to livestock, cattle and sheep, funneled out, [making the boats] an economic lifeline for farmers, store managers and people ordering by mail,” he said. “Everything came by steamboat. A house here in Irvington was built from materials ordered from Sears. The whole thing arrived in on two or three steamboat runs. Literally everything was moved by steamboats.”
Saunders Wharf is just down the bank from the two-story Greek Revival house called Wheatland, erected between 1849 and 1851.
Kasper said that in 1912, at the height of the steamboat era, the wharf had about 25 ships land each month, with about 20 passengers arriving and departing every week. Although the wharf was open to all boats, he said that the Maryland Delaware and Virginia Railway Company was given priority at the dock.
For the community around Saunders Wharf steamboats were critical to everyday life, because eight country stores that served the area depended on their deliveries, which included everything from 500 tons of fertilizer each year to six tons of groceries each week.
Just as important, he said, were exports the steamboats carried away: 250 head of poultry, 20 head of livestock and at least 50 bushels of grain every week.
Kasper noted that the boats that operated in the Rappahannock, Potomac, York and Mattaponi rivers were the maritime equivalent of Greyhound in their heyday, from 1870 to 1915.
“Living in the rural sections (of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula) would have been a very isolated existence without the steamboats,” said Kasper, noting that for many Baltimore and Norfolk would have only been a 4 to 6-hour steamboat ride away.
He noted that the steamboats, which stopped or passed Saunders multiple times a day really did do it all.
That meant the same steam-powered behemoth that could have several heads of cattle on its first level would also be serving some passengers who ate dinner over white tablecloths set with fine china on the upper levels where they also had finely decorated staterooms.
“It always made me curious about the smells on those boats as well, as I imagine things would waft up from the chickens, sheep or cattle below,” joked Kasper.
Boots and Barbecue is a celebration of all the things that drive Northern Neck Land Conservancy’s commitment to protecting working farms, waters and woodlands in our region.
Each year the event is held in one of the five Northern Neck counties and now Essex on the Middle Peninsula – and always on acreage that is permanently protected by a conservation easement. The event features a delicious barbecue buffet, live music and exhibitors and demonstrations that reflect the rural character of the Northern Neck.
The Northern Neck Land Conservancy, which began stewarding conservation easements in Essex County in 2017, has a mission to preserve the region’s rural character by conserving its lands, water, economies and culture for future generations.
All proceeds from Boots and Barbecue support Northern Neck Land Conservancy’s work to help regional landowners establish permanent conservation easements and its commitment to steward these properties in perpetuity.
Boots and Barbecue happens rain or shine. To get tickets or more information, please go to the Land Conservancy’s web page, nnconserve.org, or call its office in Warsaw at 804-250-2334.
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