By Deveron Timberlake

Huguenot Hundred is a Chesterfield County neighborhood with an unusual asset: a private, community park and boat launch on the James River. Swinging benches, a brick barbecue grill and a picnic table under tall pine trees look out onto a boat launch and dock, with the James and all of its recreational possibilities reflecting pastoral views of woods and sky.

But it wasn't always so. Longtime former resident Theodore F. Adams, Jr. says the neighborhood's natural asset was at first ignored: "When I got here in 1972, there were probably ten families [in the subdivision] but none of them had any interest in the land on the river. They didn't have children, or they just flat-out weren't interested. [Builder] John Stinson had finished all the houses and said he wasn't going to pay the taxes on the property anymore so we had to do something or he was going to put it up for auction."

Adams enlisted neighbor Jim Kauffman, an attorney, to draw up plans for the Huguenot Hundred Community Association (the "Association"), which would create a non-stock, non-profit corporation to protect and improve the property and pay the taxes. The deed was recorded in September 1978. The Association paid ten dollars to acquire the property, which covers 7.870 acres and has 605 feet of river frontage. It was purchased from the Old Gun River Corporation, which had acquired the land from the estate of Shirley Donati Bourne.

The property didn't look the way it does now. "John Stinson put the ramp in almost when he started developing in the late '60s," Adams continues, "and the woods went all the way down to the river. You couldn't even walk there. I put a gate up, and a lock on it, and told the neighbors the key would cost them $10 a year. And that's when we started getting our pittance of revenue to pay the taxes."

Adams hired a man to bush-hog an area near the boat ramp in the early 1980s. Neighbor Dave Liggan brought in a bricklayer to build the fireplace. "About that time," Adams continues, "Trinity School was expanding and the county was putting in a gas line or something on the river side of Cherokee all the way up to Bellona Arsenal. They had bulldozers, all kinds of heavy equipment, and a crew and boss man, and I built up the acquaintance. I told them that for the right to go down to our ramp and fish, they could haul all the dirt they pulled out onto the land upriver of the ramp, because all of that was swamp. Now it goes back 200 feet or more. Those men would stay up all night fishing for catfish, and they camped down there at night."

Later, the workers piled boulders and crushed rock from other projects along the banks, and opened the driveway circle and built a drainpipe to handle runoff. They also cleared away fallen trees from the land and the river, working alongside a few neighbors who took an active interest in maintaining the land. The county fire department trained its crews to use a pumper truck at the boat ramp, and began a routine of washing down the mud and debris that collected there each spring.

Adams installed a wooden wall on the upriver side of the launch to stop erosion. Then he installed the property's hanging benches after a large cedar tree fell upriver. "From big pieces of wood, I split the logs long-ways and hung the chains on the trees and put salt-treated timbers down. I spent a lot of time down there because I enjoyed doing it," Adams says. He was president of the neighborhood association three times, and his sons enjoyed fishing, boating and camping on the property. (Camping is allowed only with written permission from the Association's Board.)

Committees formed among the Association's members, and improvements continued. A potentially dangerous rope swing was removed, a liability insurance policy was purchased, and a more rigorous effort to police the property began. "I went down there many a night with a shotgun," Adams recalls, "when kids from the high schools were down there drinking and doing drugs. I'd tell them they had ten minutes to get off the property and that generally cleared them out of there, sometimes 70 or 80 people. The kids were just being vandals."

The days of shotgun-toting marshals are over, and Chesterfield County police officers now respond to complaints on the property, which occasionally lead to trespassing or underage drinking charges. For the most part, the area is quiet and used by neighborhood boating and fishing enthusiasts and their families. Annual meetings are an opportunity for the entire community to gather for socializing and to receive updates on Association information from its Board.

The property's major conversation piece, in addition to the river, is a silver-painted fire hydrant, non-working, which Adams obtained from a contractor and installed as a joke for neighborhood dogs and their owners.

As unofficial mayor of Huguenot Hundred for more than two decades, Adams watched the community change from an almost-rural area to an active neighborhood with about four dozen well-crafted houses. "All of the construction in Huguenot Hundred is excellent," he says of the work of acclaimed builder John Stinson and his son Bill. "I went through every house as it was built, and watched most of them come out of the ground," he says. "They are well constructed, quality homes."

Certain architectural guidelines and restrictive covenants apply to the neighborhood, which has a mix of traditional and contemporary homes in a variety of sizes and styles. All must be at least 2,000 square feet, and plans, including those for fences and outbuildings, must be approved by the Board's architectural review committee. An elected Board of Directors oversees the legal, financial and community business of the association, and meets a couple of times a year to resolve concerns, promote caretaking and plan for the future.

As the Association's current president, Brooks Nelson is interested in continuing forward momentum while maintaining the neighborhood's atmosphere. "While I know that nothing can stay unchanged forever, I hope that our neighborhood will always retain its trait of seeming to be a pocket of bucolic lifestyle in the midst of an ever-growing metropolitan city," Nelson says. "I hope our neighbors will always enjoy each other's company and be there when they are needed, but also will have the sense to respect each other's privacy. Most importantly, I hope our community will always be strong enough to provide a safe and secure environment for our children so that one day they may want to come back themselves."

SIGNIFICANT DATES IN HUGUENOT HUNDRED HISTORY

June 28, 1978 State Corporation Commission issues a charter to Huguenot Hundred Community Association

September 27, 1978 Deed recorded transferring the subdivision recreational property from Old Gun River Corporation to the Huguenot Hundred Community Association

Oct.16, 1978 First organizational meeting of the Board of Trustees of Huguenot Hundred Community Association; officers elected were John E. Jenkins, Jr., President; Thurman S. Cash, Jr., Vice President; John M. McDaniel, Secretary-Treasurer.