Madeleine Bolton’s fingerprints are all over Colonial Williamsburg. Her footprints, too.

That’s because 26-year-old Bolton, three years into a six-year brickmaking and masonry trades apprenticeship, has a hand in making some of the tens of thousands of clay bricks used to restore, repair, and build structures on the 300-acre historic site.

“The amount of clay is the pressure, you know, and stuff like that. I really enjoy molding. I like trying to get it exactly right, trying to slot it in there perfectly, I think that’s kind of fun to do. Like, if they want to see how I do it, I have to mentally think, ‘I need to go slower.’ My want is to go really fast, because it’s kind of fun to be like, ‘Oooh, yeah. Slap it in there, squish it down,’ which is also what I think about when I’m talking: ‘Slower. Don’t talk so fast,’” she says with a laugh.

But, if she does go fast, Bolton can fashion about 180 bricks an hour: patty-caking a 10-pound wad of wet clay into a ball before rolling it in fine sand and slapping it into a wooden form. From there, the still-soft shapes are emptied onto a flat sand patch, covered in canvas, and left to sun dry.

Come fall, Bolton will help build and stoke a massive brick kiln, and over four or five days and nights, fire the summer lot of bricks at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to a purpley-brown crisp.

It’s satisfying, hot, monotonous work. Bolton makes the occasional foot and handprint, like a secret, collective brickmakers’ prank. Look closely at original buildings in Williamsburg, and you can see Bolton’s 17th and 18th century counterparts: some free, but many enslaved.

“For us, like I said, we work an 8-hour day, like, we can leave when the day is done,” she notes. “We go home, and we think about people that came before, the enslaved laborer, making all these bricks historically. They’re making them because the next day’s not going to be any different. Talk about like how much labor and suffering came from this. Because, of course, today, all of us in the brickyard, we’re working for a wage. And they wouldn’t have been. The bricklayer historically could maybe work their way up to kind of a merchant level class. But the brickmaker, they work until they can’t anymore. And people all on that site, the enslaved labor, making all those bricks, that’s all they might know.”

Bolton’s original plan, to be an epidemiologist, was scrapped when COVID-19 struck her senior year at James Madison University.

“I’d always been somewhat obsessed with that, even as like a middle schooler, which is kind of creepy in retrospect,” she says. “I was so into it and excited about learning about disease pathways and disease response, and about how we tackle these global issues. And then seeing it falter, and seeing exactly how fraught it became, it made me less and less enthused to run into that brick wall. I was thinking about other ways to make myself helpful.”

After graduating, and casting about for some months, she landed the gig in Williamsburg in 2021. She’s one of about 30 apprentices there.

“It’s probably not something young Madeleine ever thought she would be doing, but I definitely enjoy it now. I’m very much a details person, like, to a fault,” Bolton admits. “So it works out as I’ve always liked figuring stuff out in some degree. And this offers quite a multitude of ways to do that.”

Case in point is the brickmakers’ forthcoming pug mill, a room-sized clay mixer that has a vertical shaft that, when the wheelwright finishes it, will connect to a horse whose circles will stir it. The pug mill also means Bolton won’t have to spend as much time in the pit, cutting clay with her bare feet, as the 17th and 18th century brickmakers did before her.

Plus, you know, the horse.

“We’ve already named the horse. I’m super excited. Buckwheat. That’s a brickyard classic right there,” she says with a laugh.

Our partner station WVTF has shared the stories of people across Virginia—teachers, immigrants, business owners, and others all year in a special series “Meet Virginia.”

Copyright 2024 RADIO IQ

• “ACLU of Virginia sues Hanover School Board on behalf of transgender student allegedly banned from sports team.”—WRIC

• “Virginia traffic fatalities increase 24% over past decade and it’s costing the Commonwealth billions.”—13NewsNow

• “Virginia allocates record $207M for soil and water conservation.”—Times Virginian

• “Virginia offshore wind lease sale planned for August.”—Virginian-Pilot

• “When veterans and their spouses die, he inscribes the words that describe them.”—Washington Post

DANVILLE, Va. (WSET) — When you’re driving through Danville, Caesars Virginia is sure to catch your eye, and by the end of the year, it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.

All of our wonderful restaurants, our bars, our pool, our spa,” said Chris Albrecht, Caesars Virginia General Manager. “This a true destination resort experience here in Danville.

The permanent casino will have more than 1,400 slot machines, about 80 table games, seven restaurants, and much more.

Albrecht said that construction for the permanent casino is going well. They have about 1,000 workers on site every day. A lot of progress has been made on the outside with getting the walls up. They expect the parking garage to be finished in the next few weeks. They also plan to focus on the inside and getting walls up for the restaurants, the hotel, and the convention space.

“The casino floor itself, you can actually walk on the inside, and you know where all of the different components are now going to be because you can see it all come together and taking shape and it’s really exciting,” Albrecht said.

Temporary casino in Danville celebrates one-year-anniversary

The temporary casino has been sparking a lot of economic growth in the area since it opened last May and officials hope that trend continues when permanent casino is complete. In terms of revenue, Albrecht said he thinks the temporary casino has exceeded what the city has budgeted to receive from the casino.

That’s just indirect impact. There’s also the indirect impact of those customers and workers that are here utilizing local amenities,” Albrecht said. “They’re staying in those hotels, they’re staying and enjoying those restaurants here on top of that. So, it’s not just what we bring directly to the casino, but it’s that compounding effect, that multiplier effect.

When the casino is finished, Albrecht said that Caesars Virginia will give you an experience like no other.

“Hopefully we’re going to see people not just from what we’re seeing in the temporary facility, but they’ll come from much farther away taking cars, planes, trains, or whatever to come see just a truly special transformative operation here,” Albrecht said.

Danville City Council approves an updated $750 million agreement with Caesars Casino

When the grand opening day comes, Albrecht hopes the community and staff will feel a sense of pride.

“That they’ve been a part of something that’s truly transformed into something special for the city of Danville and I think we’re going to deliver on that,” Albrecht said.

Caesars Virginia is looking to hire about 700 to 800 employees for the permanent casino. They are already working on planning hiring events in the city and surrounding areas.

There isn’t an official opening date yet. But officials say the casino is still on track to be completed late this year.