Spring House

Our water starts right here at the spring house (and at our second spring), travels through Boxerwood and out to Woods Creek, which then flows into the Maury River. After that, the Maury flows into the James River and the James flows into the Bay, thus making us a part of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Anything that affects your water also affects every single living and nonliving thing downstream of you -- all the way from Rockbridge County clear across Virginia to the Bay! Would you like it if fishermen from the Bay came up and dumped trash, fertilizer, oil, chemical or other pollutants into your water supply? Probably not. We all need to be sure that we aren't putting any of these things into our creeks & rivers and thus sending them to the Bay. Watershed education is an important part of our curriculum for schoolchildren at Boxerwood, and we hope that you will realize its importance and work hard to keep Rockbridge County's water clean too, for us and for everyone else downstream!

The mailbox holds a spring house activity and the sculpture is made of buoys, bones & other articles brought back from field trips to the Bay. It reminds us where the water is going.

Inside the spring house, look down inside the hole and see the water below.  (Watch out for poison ivy on the way into the Spring House -- and sometimes in the summertime, there is a black snake on the rafters above, enjoying the cool temperature coming from the water.) You can more easily feel the water at the Second Spring further down the path.

As you leave the spring house, you might turn right and follow the path toward the second spring and the wetlands. Should you feel like lounging for awhile, inviting benches like this one have been placed along the path for just that purpose.