Mr. Cook's portrait of of jaunty boaters on Forest Hill Park Lake (top) is typical of the images of which Richmond is the beneficiary, the record of everyday life here during the time of our great- and great-great grandparents.

All the people in the rowboats and in the boathouse are posing for the esteemed photographer, except, in the backround, up on the boathouse deck. One young woman has slung her arm over the neck and shoulder of her friend, and their lips are just beginning to touch. The kissee is gently grasping her kisser's dangling pinkie. As Cook's shutter closes, two older women — their mothers? — are noticing this matinee-idol display with expressions located somewhere between amusement and reproach.

The picture was among those reproduced and displayed on easels by the work site of the Forest Hill Lake Restoration Project, where a press conference was held Wednesday morning. And while there was no celebratory revelry as displayed by the ladies, J.R. Pope, director of the Richmond Department of Parks, Recreation & Community Facilities, was enthusiastic. Similar can't-wait-to-see-it elation was expressed by representatives of the city; Metropolitan Environmental Services, which will handle this lake-restoration project; and landscape-engineering firm Whitman, Requardt & Associates.

Pope was quite pleased to announce something good and needed. And for about a half-hour in the exquisite spring light, nobody thought about baseball stadiums or recessions. Big men in hard hats and glowing green mesh vests stood with their hands on their hips and smiled.

Pope enthused, "I have to say, that in 30 years in this business, in projects from Missouri to West Virginia, this is the most exciting I've ever been a part of. To take a landscape that had been let go and to bring it back, to restore it to what it was, for the benefit and enjoyment of this community and the city, I can't tell you how gratifying that is to get done."

Forest Hill had a lake up to about 25 years ago; a photograph taken in 1973 (right) shows two youngsters, David Mitchell and Mike Bradner, cavorting around the gazebo, with trees reflecting in the water — a childhood summer idyll. You can practically hear the cicadas whirring.

But silt filled the lake, turning it into wetlands, though trees rooted and died there that weren't suited for marshes. Periodic plans to excavate the lake got nowhere, then then came Hurricane Isabelle, the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston and other concerns to boot Forest Hill Park off the priority list. But former mayor Doug Wilder and the City of the Future plan ran funds through the pipeline that now are getting work accomplished here, at Byrd Park Lake and at Joseph Bryan Park.

Eric and Erin Ziegler, brothers who are working for Mobile Dredging & Pumping of Pennsylvania and who'll live in Richmond for about six months while pumping out the lake, explained the technicalities of the process. The Zieglers are part of the group running the big throbbing machines that will "dewater" the marsh, followed by sucking up the muck and transporting it uphill, where it will be hauled away, some to landfill, some to Gillies Creek Industrial Recycling.

Eric pointed on a diagram to forebays housed within stone containers that will sit before Reedy Creek and another meander that runs into the lake, which will act as silt strainers that will be periodically dug out and emptied by the state Department of Environmental Quality.

"Reedy Creek is a tremendous watershed," Erin explained. "And this project will prevent silt from running out here into the James River."

Pope asked that the public bear in mind that this is now an active construction site, so stay on the hilltops and watch from a distance. Inside a year, a lake will appear. His hope is that a small island, indicated on the original park-property plats, will get uncovered. "No special reason, " he said and grinned. "I just like islands. They're neat."

Pope doesn't think there'll boating on the lake, though. That gets into liability and safety issues.

Work will not be conducted on weekends so as to not disturb the popular South of the James Market.

Middle photograph by Gay Burns/Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, Valentine Richmond History Center