Charlottesville spent decades debating how to assure the city’s water supply. This year, the Ragged Mountain Reservoir opened, and the city announced a bonus – more than 900 acres of wooded land for hiking, birding, fishing and crossing the only bridge of its kind in Virginia. Sandy Hausman has details.
The 170-acre reservoir is surrounded by about 800 acres of wooded land north of I-64 and south of 250. Hiking trails wind through the property, and to make walks across the water possible, planners installed the state’s first floating bridge. Teri Kent is Communications Manager for the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority.
“This is a drinking water supply, so we do need to build in that water fluctuation," she explains. "As we consume water and nature puts it back in, it can fluctuate up to ten feet.”
Plastic boxes filled with foam are anchored to concrete pads installed before the land was flooded. Chris Gensic, a parks and tails planner for the city says it would have been far more expensive to build a conventional steel bridge 220 feet long, and the floating design was not unfamiliar in these parts.
“It looks like a modern Civil War pontoon bridge," he says. "You take your boats and line them up, and then you lay wood atop your boats, and you can get across the river.”
Another unique feature of this new preserve is a peninsula created by accident.
“There was a slight miscalculation of how much earth they needed, and there’s this leftover peninsula sticks out into the lake, and it’s really cool, because there are these three big, ragged rocks sticking out of the peninsula," Gensic says.
"It was a happy accident," Kent adds. "The engineers now call it 'dragon’s back.' It’s Charlottesville’s Stonehenge.”
And, finally, visitors will find an enchanting way-finding system at Ragged Mountain – a series of wooden sculptures.
“We have a local arborist. He’s actually the arborist for the University of Virginia," Gensic explains. "As a hobby he carves old stumps and logs into critters. We have a mountain man, a bear, an eagle. We would like to do a fish, maybe a bug.”
Rather than make signs pointing to the parking lot, he says, the sculptures are looking that way.
“The critter or the mountain man is facing the trail that gets you home the quickest.”
Wind and paddle powered boats are allowed at the Ragged Mountain Reservoice, and the city is now debating whether to permit joggers, dogs and bikes – a decision expected this fall.