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I hat source is threatened, according to Mac McGrail, who owns land on both sides of the river at the end of Route 632, at the base of Chester Gap. Tom Jenkins, one of Mr. McGraiPs neighbors, has contracted with Blue Ridge Lumber Co. of Fishersville to log part of a 642acre tract he owns adjacent to Mr. McGrail’s property on the Fauquier side.
To gain access to the property, vehicles must cross the Rappahannock River. There’s no bridge. For a distance of about 80 feet, the riverbed actually serves as the road, Mr. McGrail said, and property owners have been using the ford for years. As with similar crossings elsewhere in the county, over time the dirt has washed away, leaving a hardpacked rock bottom over which the vehicles travel.
That is, until the logging operation arrived, Mr. McGrail said.
To make it easier for the giant flatbed tractor-trailers, skidders and other equipment to get in and out, the loggers widened what was, according to Mr. McGrail, a dirt path about eight feet wide to twice that width. Then, a bulldozer was used to scrape the streambed into a berm which diverted the flow of the river from the roadbed to a channel alongside the road, separated by a waisthigh wall of dirt and rock.
Instead of flowing in the roadway, the river was channeled to cross it at a right angle at a point about 75 feet downstream.
On Friday afternoon, the fruits of that labor were obvious. The heavy rains over the Labor Day weekend had turned the freshly scraped dirt into a.muddy morass, the numerous ruts already filled with ankle-deep brown water. As
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