Charlottesville Reservoir
- The Charlottesville Reservoir is the next stop, which receives most of its water from the North Fork Moormans River.
Personal Connection
- The Charlottesville reservoir is a place where my friends and I enjoyed hanging out during the pandemic. While you are technically not supposed to swim in it, we would hang out with chairs on the bank of the lake. As you can see in one of the videos, the lake is decently sized and surrounded by mountains. It is much different from the North Fork Moormans River. It is quieter with calmer water, which enabled me to hear the sticks and leaves crunching while walking, birds chirping, and the trees moving from the wind. While its primary purpose is to serve as a water source, it also provides a great place to relax and enjoy the water and green mountains that surround it. While most areas around the reservoir are pleasant, right at the dam is the opposite. It has many areas fenced off with signs that read “Danger, no trespassing”, “No swimming” and “restricted area no unauthorized personnel beyond this point”. Even though the signs make sense since dams can be quite dangerous, it still shows limits of access in the area.
Historical Significance
- When taking place at the reservoir, many different thoughts came to my mind. First, the reservoir was built in 1924, to provide plenty of water to the area of Charlottesville from that time to the present day. The water would travel through a pipeline from Sugar Hollow to Ragged Mountain (Hawkins). By 1925, the average output on a daily basis was 2.5 million gallons of water (James). The Charlottesville Reservoir also is known by the Moormans River Dam, Sugar Hollow Dam, Moormans River Intake, and the Sugar Hollow Reservoir (James). Since the dam is not that old, I thought of how different this place would look without the dam. Also, the different prior habitats were destroyed to create space for the reservoir.
Works Cited
Education, Virginia Department of. “Monacan Indian Nation.” VDOE :: Virginia's First People Past & Present - Monacan Indian Nation, www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/history/virginias-first-people/today/monacan-indian-nation/index.shtml.
Encyclopedia Virginia Staff . “Monacan Indian Nation.” Encyclopedia Virginia, encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/monacan-indian-nation/.
Hawkins , Blair. “Water Supply History.” Water Supply History - Blair's Magazine, 5AD, 2017, www.blairhawkins.net/posts/Rivanna/#:~:text=The%20city%20of%20Charlottesville%20acquired,build%20the%20University%20of%20Virginia.
“History Today .” The History Search | Moormans River, www.thtsearch.com/content/Moormans_River/.
James , Phil. “Sugar Hollow Reservoir: A Cool Drink of Water.” The Crozet Gazette, 13 Jan. 2010, www.crozetgazette.com/2010/01/13/sugar-hollow-reservoir-a-cool-drink-of-water/.
“The Monacan in Virginia.” Virginia Places , www.virginiaplaces.org/nativeamerican/monacantribe.html.
Native Land Digital , 8 Oct. 2021, native-land.ca/.
North Fork Moormans River, 2022 Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, dwr.virginia.gov/waterbody/north-fork-moormans-river/.
“Our History.” MONACAN INDIAN NATION, www.monacannation.com/our-history.html.
Paullin, Charles O. “The Moorman Family of Virginia.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3, 1932, p. 177., doi:10.2307/1919177.
