Scottsville, Virginia

by Robert Wilson

When Chris Long came to Scottsville, Virginia, nine years ago, the historic small town on the James River had been trapped in time for decades by a series of raw aging floods. In 1989, a levee had been built, designed to spare the town’s 600 inhabitants from the recurring cycle of disaster “Before the levee,” Long says, “the town had flooded so much that nobody paid it much mind.”

Long took over a restaurant in Scottsville and eventually became the town’s mayor, serving until only recently Pie now realizes the river’s waters preserved a precious quality in the town even as it filled its streets and shops with mud and muck. “It’s one of the last remaining true small towns. It’s authentic.”

He’s right. Here at the northernmost tip of a huge horseshoe bend in the James River, you can walk quiet streets among 18th- century brick and clapboard buildings, and the news of the world and even the fact of this inauspicious new century are easy to forget. You can stand with a friend by the river’s edge in the late afternoon, gazing across the swift water at the leafed-out trees on the opposite bank, perhaps a hundred yards away, and your troubles seem far. In summer, when the river runs more slowly, rent an inner tube, and you can drift for hours on clean water filled with smallmouth bass, negotiate the occasional small rapids, and watch the tall banks slip by.

In the 19th century, the river made Scottsville an important center for commerce and gave healthy -style buildings. In 1745, one year the town was founded, the first courthouse for Albemarle County was established on a hill above it. Among its magistrates was Peter Jefferson, Thomas, father; Peter’s less famous son, Randolph, owned the land across the river from what was then Scott’s Landing. TJ would build his own home, Monticello, 20 miles north of Scottsville, overlooking Charlottesville, where he also founded the University of Virginia.

If you’re in a certain frame of mind, you might save the Jefferson legacy for another day, another visit. At Chester, a bed and breakfast dating to 1847, there’s a fireplace in every room and slumberous porches and gardens.

Take a walking tour of Scottsville’s architecture (for a map, stop at the Municipal Building at 401 the Scottsville Museum on Main Street, or the Confederate Cemetery on hardware Street, where the wounded who died in Scottsville’s four Civil War hospitals are buried. In the evening, eat at Chris Long’s Café Bocce in an old storefront on Valley Street, where the southern Italian pastas and fish dishes rival anything served in Charlottesville and other points north.

Why Scottsville? It is a simple place, made by a beautiful river, absent of crowds, with the architecture and authenticity of a working small town. It is the kind of place you go to move slow, breathe deep. As Long puts it , Scottsville Valley Street) and eat lunch near the river,
“is just waking up.”