Tag: South Hill Virginia

Virginia’s tobacco history

A look at the South Hill’s Tobacco Farm Life Museum of Virginia

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With Wednesday just a short day, many of us opted for a late start so we could visit the local museums in South Hill. After all, tourism is part of bike touring.

I passed on the doll museum (a local woman’s large collection) and the train museum (the layout of the local club plus part of another collection — I was told it was impressive) and just went to the tobacco museum for a bit of education.

oct 8 2015 phone 004Tobacco is still part of the area economy, but with the help of machines, three people can plant an acre in an hour or two, not the full day it took a century ago. Back then, you used a wooden peg to make the hole for the plant (not too different, really, than I sometimes do in my garden), then use this metal contraption that would drop a seedling into the hole and add water.

planting tobaccoLeonard, who runs the museum, gave me a peek into the sheds where they once dried tobacco leaves, a process that took days and a fire that kept the space around 120 degrees. My bet is that today, those men would be barbecue pit masters.

drying and curing tobaccoIt sounds like a hard life.

selling tobacco

Some more pictures from the museum:

paying for shoes

tobacco museum equipment

Impromptu trail maintenance

The wooden bollard that keeps motorized vehicles off the Tobacco Heritage Trail in South Hill had been put in backwards at some point. We fixed that.

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One of our riders has a sharp eye for the little stuff — in this case, East Coast Greenway arrows that pointed the wrong way. It was at the end of the off-road section of the Tobacco Heritage Trail as we reached South Hill on Tuesday night, and Rob Dexter vowed to fix it on Wednesday morning. I volunteered to come along to document this, and before I knew it we had become quite a little group.

Basically, the wooden bollard that keeps motorized vehicles off the trail had been put in backwards at some point, most likely when it was pulled out another time. The Tobacco Heritage Trail sign on the sloped part was facing the trail instead of the road, so those riding to the trail couldn’t see it. That meant the East Coast Greenway arrows were off too. So it was just a “simple” matter of someone (in this case, he-man Andy Hamilton) lifting the bollard out of its slot, giving it half a turn and putting the metal rod back in place.

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Day 3 – Quiet roads in rural Virginia from Petersburg to South Hill, Va.

72 sunny miles in rural Virginia

quiet roads2

A long but fabulous day: 72 miles on mostly quiet roads or trails. And sunny. What a contrast to Monday!

We cut Robert E. Lee’s last supply line as we headed south of Petersburg, leaving those chasing Lee and Grant’s ghosts to fade toward Appomattox while we headed southwest to South Hill.

This is rural southern Virginia, where towns have been left behind as the tobacco industry survives on life support and the interstate (I-85 in this case) saps their commercial life. Truly a case where a developed East Coast Greenway could bring some badly needed cash into these communities. We rode some of the time on U.S. 1. Where I live, it’s three scary lanes of traffic in each direction, and you’d be insane to bike on it. Here, traffic is insanely light.

Continue reading “Day 3 – Quiet roads in rural Virginia from Petersburg to South Hill, Va.”