Researchers and volunteers now documenting wildlife, native flora and the area’s deep ties to Indigenous communities
By: Evan Visconti | Virginia Mercury
Middlesex County, VA – Over 2.5 miles of Dragon Run frontage and approximately 250 acres of bald cypress-tupelo swamp have been conserved by the Friends of Dragon Run in partnership with the Chesapeake Conservancy.
The project received $500,000 in funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Chesapeake WILD program.
Dragon Run is a secluded blackwater stream that slowly weaves 40 miles down Virginia’s Middle Peninsula.
Stained dark brown by tannins released from decomposing vegetation, the waterway shifts from fresh to brackish water as it flows through rural portions of four counties before emptying into the Piankatank River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.
The main stream channel connects to a vast network of neighboring swamps and wetlands. As a whole, researchers and naturalists consider Dragon Run as one of the most pristine water bodies in Virginia, according to a Virginia Department of Forestry overview.
In 1976, it was ranked number two in terms of ecological significance by a Smithsonian Institute study of over 200 rivers and streams throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
“And it’s still to this day equally wonderful,” said Jeff Wright, the past president of Friends of Dragon Run and current president of the Old-Growth Forest Network.
Wright played a key role in the multi-year effort to secure the property, which will be managed to preserve its natural, cultural and scenic values, as well as for outdoor experiences.
Portions of the Dragon Run watershed have remained largely unchanged for decades — and in some places, centuries. The historical routes that eventually became roads in Virginia have always bypassed or parallelled it, said Wright.
Despite its partial use as valued timber and farmland, much of the Dragon Run watershed remains inaccessible, “just as it was for our ancestors,” Wright said. “The only ones who really understood it well were the Indigenous tribes.”
Dragon Run is part of the ancient Indigenous homelands for a number of Virginia tribes, including the Pamunkeys, Chickahominys, Mattaponis, Rappahannocks, Nanzaticos, Piankatanks and other Native people.
During Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, Indigenous tribes used their knowledge of Dragon Run to outmaneuver and evade Bacon’s forces who were on a mission to rid the region of the Native people who had called it home for thousands of years.
“Since we know the Dragon was a historic battlefield that precipitated the 1677 Peace Treaty of Middle Plantation for the Powhatan tribes,” Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe said, “we are excited to celebrate its essential value for preservation, given its ecological and historical significance.”
The Dragon’s place in history
At the dawn of the 350 year anniversary of the conflict that took place there during Bacon’s Rebellion, archeologists and historians are still deciphering Dragon Run’s complicated past.
A team of researchers from St. Mary’s College of Maryland teamed up with the Friends of Dragon Run and the Pamunkey and Rappahannock Tribes last year to create a report about the conflict, “Mapping the Dragon: An Indigenous History of Bacon’s Rebellion.”
The report, which was submitted to the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program, created a framework for “more on-the-ground research,” said Julia King, a professor of anthropology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a lead researcher for the report. The research requires more funding to continue, which King pointed out as a critical next step.
Despite not yet conducting any archeological surveys in Dragon Run for the report, King said that the documentary and historical research compiled through last year’s collaboration has already “changed how many people, many historians, are thinking about Bacon’s rebellion.”
A symposium is planned this fall “so that the public can come and learn that American history is not just English history, that it is solidly Indigenous history,” King said, “and that Indigenous people weren’t passive, that they had agency, that they contributed.”
Devoid of the true events that took place in Dragon Run, “the narrative around Bacon’s Rebellion has been written to suggest that the Native people were on the run, that they were being chased into the Dragon,” said King.
“But in fact, it really appears that they were luring Bacon’s forces away from their towns … and into a landscape where the Native people clearly had the upper hand,” said King.
Once inside the maze of swamps and forested wetlands that make up Dragon Run, the tribes made the “tactical decision” not to fire on any of Bacon’s forces, King said.
“They did not kill any English forces, but they confused Bacon’s men, and they slowed them down,” said King. “That gave the colony’s leaders in Jamestown the opportunity to sort of regroup and eventually put down the rebellion.”
The Indigenous leader credited with much of the decision making during this period of great upheaval for the tribes was Cockacoeske, the Pamunkey’s “weroansqua,” or leader.
“Cockacoeske was an extraordinary person, an amazing leader — there is absolutely no question,” said King. “She did protect her people, and of course as we know the Pamunkeys are here today, they survive. And I think a lot of it has to do with the work that she did during her tenure as a leader.”
There were other Indigenous leaders too, but “archives can be very unbalanced,” King said. “We know a lot about Cockacoeske but not a lot about the other leaders.”
Although the tribes likely evaded Bacon’s forces in an area known as Bestland, located further north in Dragon Run than the recently conserved property, King said the 650 acres are still valued historically because they are “part of what the Indigenous people knew.”
There are also the remnants of a canal over half a mile long and about 50 feet wide located on the property, originally built in the 1840s to float timber to sawmills and to drain cropland, according to The Rappahannock Scenic River Atlas.
“With the Friends of Dragon Run trying to preserve the land and keep it pristine, it also helps preserve it so that we have a chance to see who was there before Bacon’s Rebellion, who was there afterward, and there’s a lot of history in there,” King said.
Stewardship and preservation
Collective efforts to preserve Dragon Run for future generations began in the mid 1980s and have amounted to the protection of over 25% of the watershed, according to Wright.
The large swaths of preserved forests, swamps and wetlands amount to a significant wildlife corridor that researchers say provides essential habitat for a wide range of species, some of which — like the prothonotary warbler — are complex and threatened.
The yellow songbird tends to avoid forest patches smaller than 250 acres and is experiencing a global decline, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
“If we keep adding development in between the forests, then they don’t have that continuous area,” said Carol Kauffman, president of Friends of Dragon Run. “So with this property being 650 acres, that is a good span for the warblers.”
Researchers and volunteers spend time in Dragon Run looking and listening for prothonotary warblers, among many other species, day and night. Kauffman said she looks forward to documenting a wide range of animals on the new property, from black bears, beavers and bobcats to snakes, frogs and salamanders.
The Friends of Dragon Run has a page on their website dedicated to swamp sightings where volunteers post monthly articles about the more than 2,200 species and five distinct natural communities found throughout Dragon Run.
“We want people to recognize this is here,” said Wright, “and to fall in love with this place.”
The Friends of Dragon Run will likely pursue an easement for the property in the future to further their efforts to preserve and protect the land in perpetuity, whether for cultural resources, natural resources or both, “but it’s a long and expensive process,” said Wright.
In the meantime, Wright said, the local nonprofit will work with the Virginia Department of Forestry (DOF) to maximize the native biodiversity on the property, which will require time to regenerate, along with “aggressive action against invasives.”
Promoting native biodiversity will be a “more involved” process on the new property because of a loblolly pine plantation that existed there.
“Different stands of trees were harvested and replanted at different times,” said Wright. The last stand of trees to be harvested on the property was 24 acres in 2022, according to DOF data.
There is an effort by state foresters to restore the role fire plays in the Dragon Run ecosystem. Foresters will continue to utilize prescribed fires on the property, said Lisa Deaton, an area forester with DOF, to keep certain types of forests, grasslands, and other landscapes healthy.
When asked about the involvement of local tribes in stewarding the property, Wright said that they are an important partner to Friends of Dragon Run in its mission to preserve the land for its cultural and ecological value.
New chapter in an old story
Dragon Run’s moniker predates the 1607 arrival to Virginia of English explorer John Smith, and its true origin remains a mystery to this day.
“We love the fact that nobody really knows why it’s called the Dragon,” Wright said.
One theory is that explorers used to draw a dragon on portions of their maps that were unexplored or potentially dangerous. Others credit the stream’s name to its serpentine path or the appearance of some of its vegetation.
With so much still to learn about Dragon Run, Wright said much of the continuing work will be to simply document what exists there today.
Teams of volunteers are often sent out to complete what are called “bioblitzes,” where a large amount of wildlife data is gathered in one short period using tracking tools like iNaturalist and Merlin Bird ID.
It’s a 24-hour venture, and at night, you can hear “the most amazing nightlife noise at 70 decibels,” said Wright. “There is so much information that we want to contribute to in order to really know what’s out there.”
With rapid changes occurring throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a result of climate change, Wright said “we’re trying to document a baseline for as much as we can.”
Dragon Run even holds clues from past human civilizations that predate the Chesapeake Bay, which as we know it today is only about 3,000 years old, said King.
A projectile point was recovered from a site in the present day Dragon Run watershed expected to be from 6,200 to 5,000 BCE (before common era), probably well before the Piankatank River or Dragon Run had assumed their modern forms, according to King’s 2025 report.
“These are places where we can say Indigenous people have been here a really long time, they’re still here, and boy do they have a story to tell,” said King.
