Talk:Farrar's Island

Farrar's Island Expanded
I've substantially reworked this article. I've tried to preserve the points raised in the previous version, but I've tried to knit together a narrative and tie all the information to accessible sources. Unfortunately, Farrar's Island has been the site of massive ecological devastation (floods, the Dutch Gap Canal, being a formal or informal artillery range in the Civil War and a formal one for World War I.) Because of this devastation there is almost no archeological artifacts on the island itself, except perhaps for a small area just to the east of Dutch Gap between Cox's Landing to the north and Varina to the east,  (Though the people at Henrico Historical Park diligently continue to search those few places that weren't trammelled by flood and war.)

In spite of the weak archeological record, the historical record still records enough to allow me to roughly divide the article into three sections based on the major touchpoints where more salient moments of the American historical narrative passed close to the Island: Colonial History, Civil War History, and Post-Civil War History. All three are interesting in their own right. The Colonial History overlaps to some extent with the Henrico article, as well as introducing the Island's namesakes and the Randolph family.

The Civil War history overlaps somewhat with a number of issues, such as the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. However, there is a big overlap with the Dutch Gap article. (The creation of the Dutch Gap Canal in the Civil War is worthy of its own article, but the Dutch Gap article should probably be renamed the the Dutch Gap Canal to reflect that the Civil War focus at Farrar Island's neck was the creation of the canal.) The Post-Civil War aspect is interesting in its own right as one of the symbols of physical reconstruction of the South and the "rationalization" of the James River Waterway above its junction with the Appomattox at modern Hopewell.

As always, I've tried to tie as many of the citations as I could to accessible online sources. Hopefully, this takes the article a step further in being a useful resource to Wikipedia users. Wtfiv (talk) 06:33, 5 March 2020 (UTC)