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β§ Frederic Edwin Church β§
Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 β April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter who was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. Church was best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. His ...
#fredericedwinchurch #hudsonriverschoolamerican #hudsonriverschool #hudsonriver #riverschool #wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Edwin_Church -
Natural Bridge, Virginia
βThe Natural bridge, the most sublime of Natureβs works, [...] is on the ascent of a hill, which seems to have been cloven through its length by some great convulsion. Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have resolution to walk to them and look over into the abyss.β
~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781The Natural Bridge, located in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia's Valley and Ridge, stands as testament to the slowly erosive power of water, the solubility of limestone, and the vastness of geologic time. Some 500 million years ago, the area was an ancient shallow sea called Iapetus, home to organisms whose calcium carbonate shells and other deposits collected slowly on the sea floor. Compacted and cemented over the eons, they eventually formed the thick horizontal limestone strata found in Virginia today.
Because rain water is slightly acidic it slowly dissolves limestone. Seeping in through cracks and crevices and dissolving the rock as it goes, the water eventually forms an underground river. As the river carved further down into the earth, the sides of the cavern steepened and the top gradually eroded its way upstream leaving only the beautiful arch at Natural Bridge.
Some day it too will be gone, but in August of 1767, Thomas Jefferson was enraptured by his first glimpse of the Natural Bridge. Jefferson purchased the tract of land that Natural Bridge was located on in 1774 from King George III. Jefferson wrote that, "I view it in some degree as a public trust, and would on no consideration permit the bridge to be injured, defaced, or masked from public view."
During the time the Natural Bridge was in Jefferson's care, it became an international tourist attraction, and an inspiration for many great artists including Frederic Edwin Church who painted the Bridge in 1852 shown below. The bridge was even immortalized in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, who described the breaching of the whale as; β...for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginiaβs Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight.β
Today the Natural Bridge is one of the oldest tourist destinations in the United States. The Natural Bridge and surrounding areas have been designated a National Historic Landmark, a Virginia Historic Landmark, managed by the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, a nonprofit devoted to conservation, education, and recreation. Natural Bridge consists of over 1600 acres of wildlife habitat, streams, and caves that are home to hundreds of wildlife species, rare bats, invertebrates, and unusual communities of plants. They write that "The property will be preserved and restored wherever possible before donation of the property to the Virginia State Parks system."
Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederic_Edwin_Church_-_The_Natural_Bridge,_Virginia.jpg
Photo from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Bridge_(Virginia)
#NaturalBridge #Virginia #FredericEdwinChurch #Limestone #Art #ThomasJefferson #geology
