Editor, Gazette-Journal:

This letter to the editor was composed, but not sent, in July after reading the Board of Supervisors’ decision not to proceed with the study and permitting process of dredging Put-In Creek (before the Army Corps of Engineers announced its own study). It is submitted here to remind folks of the history that would be undiscovered and the benefits unrealized if Put-In Creek is left to the encroachment of the environment.

I read with interest and sadness the decision not to pursue the Put-In Creek project. Thinking of what we will never see or know about our history is heartbreaking.

What if there was no Colonial Williamsburg? What if Rockefeller was prevented in the excavation of historic buildings? What if significant pipes, shards of pottery, bottles, and belt buckles still lay buried under dirt and growth?

Where would we be if the Revolutionary War period was left only to the assumption of what might have happened? What if the beach at Yorktown ...