The photo below ought to give pause to anyone who went to Mary Washington College when I did in the early 1990’s.  That is indeed Campus Walk back when it was Campus Drive, a legitimate roadway for the Town of Fredericksburg.

I have no idea when it was closed to automobile traffic and the walkway was created.  The photo dates from 1981.  (I am using it here with permission from UMW Special Collections; it comes from the Simpson Library’s Centennial photo database.)

It’s weird though.  Campus Walk was a focal point of college life, especially its social aspects.  It was where you said hello to a lot of your friends and exchanged news and plans, in the days before the internet and cell phones.  And it gave the small campus an isolated feel that was kind of cool.

I’d heard about it being a road when I was a student, though.  I worked at The Rising Sun Tavern museum downtown, and a couple of the other tour guides were women who had graduated from Mary Wash in the 1980’s.  They had some vivid memories of young men from town (and Marines from Quantico) hollering at them as they drove through.  I can see how that might have occasionally gotten awkward.