The bateau man stands proudly on the bow of his ship, looking towards the future.

Surrounded by nine stars — one for each of the nine states that were once part of Virginia — the man’s silhouette is set against a background of red, white and blue.

Our city’s flag is a thing of beauty, and the bateau man represents the role that our canal system played in helping Richmond grow.

At the Valentine, the new exhibition “West By Water: Richmond’s James River and Kanawha Canal” celebrates this history with a series of black and white photographs taken by longtime Richmond photographer John Henley. The photographs are accompanied by historical insights from Harry Kollatz Jr., author and Richmond Magazine senior writer.

Henley, a Richmond native, studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early ’70s before returning to work as a commercial and fine arts photographer. The 80-year-old has published several books, including 2020’s “ARTISTS,” a six-year project to document people who have provided major contributions to Richmond’s cultural landscape. “West by Water” has an accompanying book that Henley published earlier this year.

Henley was inspired to photograph the canals after reading a book about our nation’s railroads. The book included haunting photographs of abandoned railways.

“At some point, the need for these railroads stopped because it had been replaced by the highway,” says Henley. “It got me thinking about technology.”

The James River and Kanawha Canal was the brainchild of George Washington. Having surveyed the mountains of what was then western Virginia — today’s West Virginia, Kentucky and the north bank of the Ohio River — our nation’s first president believed that having a water route to the west would ensure that Virginia became an economic powerhouse.

“He wanted to link Tidewater Virginia to the Mississippi River Valley, the High River Valley,” Kollatz explains. “He knew the layout of the land. In fact, he owned properties out in the far western part of the state and West Virginia.”

Though promoted by Washington and fellow founding fathers Edmund Randolph and John Marshall, the ambitious project ran into numerous issues. It was frequently damaged by flooding. It failed financially several times. And that’s to say nothing of the slow, grueling manual labor needed to break through the rocky terrain.

Initially, the project employed paid Irish immigrants to build the canal. After many of them died, they were replaced by enslaved Africans.

“It was dirty, horrible, disease-ridden work,” Kollatz says. “They didn’t have steam cranes. They didn’t have dynamite. It was all picks and axes.”

Eventually, the canal made it 196.5 miles west of Richmond before stopping in the Botetourt County town of Buchanan in 1851. It was a major feat of engineering: the first interlocking and navigable canal system in the country.

“Without that canal, Richmond would likely have not reached the commercial success it did in the mid-19th century,” Kollatz says. “The canal was incredibly important for the industrial center of the city: the Gallego Mills and the Crenshaw Haxall Mills. They, prior to the Civil War, were the greatest producers of flour in the world. They were shipping flour to the 49ers in California.”

Boats, navigated by bateau men, would ferry passengers and freight up and down the canal. It’s important to note, Kollatz says, that the bateau operators, these symbols of our city, were all either enslaved or freed Black men.

Though perhaps spartan by today’s standards, gliding along the canal in a bateau was much more comfortable than riding in a bumpy carriage.

“People would take the canal for a date night,” Kollatz says. “You’d start downtown and you’d go to the Pump House for a dance or a picnic. It was considered rather idyllic.”

The canal’s usefulness would be short lived. Between the Civil War destroying sections of the waterway and the advance of railroads, the canals never recovered their pre-war standing. The Richmond and Alleghany Railroad — which later became part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ¬— purchased the canal’s right-of-way. Tracks were laid on the former horse path that was used to pull boats through the waterway.

Still, Kollatz says this lesser known slice of Richmond history should be embraced and celebrated.

“It’s your city,” Kollatz says. “You should know about [the canal] and view it not just as some odd remnant but a vital component of what Richmond was and is.”

“West By Water: Richmond’s James River and Kanawha Canal” is on exhibition until Sept. 7, 2026, at the Valentine Museum, 1015 E. Clay St. For more information visit thevalentine.org or call 804-649-0711.

Correction: The original version of this story had an error of attribution regarding the original stars on the Richmond flag, they are for the nine states that were once part of Virginia.