Like their ancestors in Europe and Asia for centuries, early Americans were avid consumers of hemp products for clothing, sailing, medicine, and smoking pleasure. Virginia native Thomas Jefferson was quoted: "Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see." See the collection at the shoppe!

Early American shipping and industry was so dependent on strong-as-steel industrial hemp for sail canvas, rope, fishing nets and cloth that the King George mandated that every settler plant an acre of marijuana. See the collection!

Before the canals were constructed, cannabis and tobacco were loaded into giant barrels called "hogsheads" and poled down-river in specially-built James River Batteaux. See the collection!

The James River was the lifeblood of Colonial Virginia, providing all manner of fishing, transportation and prosperity. Hemp provided the ropes and lines and sails and nets and clothing for river folk. Marijuana was first spotted in the New World by Capt. John Smith's crew being cultivated by Native Americans along the James River near what is now Richmond.

Hoghead barrels were stuffed to the brim with hemp, tobacco and other valuable staples—then rolled overland from fertile Virginia farms to river ports and towns by oxen and mules. See the collection!

Up until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, hemp was a wide-spread commodity with multiple uses and was even considered legal tender to pay taxes and debts. George Washington, who established the original James River Company to construct the canal system, in 1794 wrote, "Make the most of the Indian hemp seed...and sow it everywhere." Today hemp and CBD are cultivated for medicine, food, textiles, biodegradable plastic and even fuel.