From the Richmond Dispatch, 6/1/1884, p. 2, c. 1

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE EAST END.
Something About the Picturesque Features of Chimborazo and Marshall Parks, and Suggestions About the Soldiers’ Home.

To the Editor of the Dispatch:

Those of our citizens who appreciate beautiful scenery and a happy exhibition of work of nature and art would be repaid for a ride any morning or evening of this delightful season around and through Chimborazo and Marshall Parks. We can speak confidently and without fear of disappointing any, however fastidious in matters of location, scenery, and prospect. Let them accept our invitation and see what inspiring admiration follows.

Our faithful City Engineer has so far advanced these works to completion (including the roadway or drive around the base of these parks) as to show the admirable designs for public comfort in this portion of the city that we learn were so largely his planning and conception.

Passing along Broad street over the deep ravine that has now been filled across (in which is located the famous Bloody-Run spring that once furnished by pipe service a considerable portion of the city with pure water) you immediately enter the wonderful Chimborazo Park. We say wonderful, and we mean it, for its elevation and surrounding slopes and vales, and the green sward-covered table-land that caps its almost mountain height, looking down upon the abyss and plains below, all give to it a peculiar grandeur for a low-land prospect. Here the weary will be tempted to halt and partake of relaxation, the scientist and scholar to pause for contemplation, and the maiden and lover to abide and feast on the harmony and beauty that nature has pictured in perspective poetry. It is quite improbably that a like combination of natural grandeur and beauty is to be found within fifty miles of Richmond. Aye, more: we lately heard a citizen of experience, judgment, and taste say that he chanced recently to visit Chimborazo, and was surprised at the interesting character and beauty of the scene before him, and when he said it presented to his mind features sublimely suited to a park that he questioned is the country could anywhere else produce, I said to myself here is one intelligent citizen of Shockoe Hill bearing witness to the merits of this remarkable addition to the attractions of Richmond that many have not become acquainted with.

Entering the park, you pass over a firm and even road-bed around its upper margin, with all earthly objects planted far below you or in the distance veiled. A bold river, its vessels of commerce, and railroads and trains mapped in view, strike you with delightful emotions. Advancing to the eastern extremity of the park, you enter the new roadway, which (though not entirely completed is quite passable) winds around the declivities of Chimborazo and Marshall Parks. By a gentle slope you reach what was once “Griffin’s Spring,” in a lot of ground formerly delightfully shaded with beech and other trees, in which the volunteer companies in ante-bellum days met to have their social repasts on commemoration occasions. Continuing your drive or ride, you pass westwardly by dissembling curves, with the river and harbor all the while in view, over the southern end of the great Chesapeake and Ohio railroad tunnel, and within a few feet of the capstones that surmount the arch to this entrance to it. Turning around due south you pass alongside the bluff projecting from the hill lying southward from Marshall Park that immediately overlooks the shipping; and, as if you were suspended between the dwellings and gardens above and the shipping and warehouses below, you may fancy something ethereal bearing up and on, till you reach the street-car sheds at the foot of Main street. Here, by pleasing curves, you ascend into Marshall Park, reaching an elevation corresponding to Chimborazo. Contiguous to Chimborazo we have the charming valley of Gillie’s creek, with its numerous branches and ravines communicating, fringed with verdure and mantled with forest growth. Away in the distance the quiet country lands and trees and homes of the husbandmen are pensively mirrored to our vision. These, all grouped into view, combine a galaxy of enchanting scenery that is rarely to be met with.

As the Soldiers’ Home is in contemplation, it will likely occur to those intelligent and observing managers of this laudable enterprise that this section would be most suitable for the building of an institution where inmates could have access with the public to Chimborazo Park. On the western slopes of the valley of Gillie’s creek the grounds for cultivation are to the south, and are protected from the north winds, and favor the earliest growth of vegetation. Here once was Rennie’s Garden, and here sunrise kisses the first dawn of day.                                     C.

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