Pre-emptive strike

June 7, 2005 8:00 am

Pre-emptive strike

Offense is the best defense when it comes to preserving Civil War sites

"THE JOURNEY THROUGH HALLOWED GROUND." The name itself is evocative, ringing with echoes of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. To "hallow" something is to set it apart, to make it sacred. But Lincoln, dedicating a portion of the battlefield, rightfully proclaimed those who had fought and died there had already sanctified the land with their blood.

Now, a 175-mile swath of "hallowed" Piedmont ground has been targeted by a coalition of Civil War preservation groups and federal, state, and local officials for a pre-emptive strike designed to keep sacred sites from being swallowed by the relentless march of development. The corridor, from Gettysburg to Monticello, includes the homes of six presidents and a million acres of land already listed on the National Historic Registry.

Stung by the bittersweet lesson of the fight against The Walt Disney Co.'s "Celebrate America" theme park (the idea was abandoned but the land, near Interstate 66 and U.S. 15, was still sold for development), the JTHG coalition plans to find innovative ways to buy properties of interest.

"If we are serious about preserving our environmental and historic resources," Fauquier County Supervisor Harry Atherton told the Fauquier Times-Democrat, "then we have to put our money where our mouth is." The county--home to many of America's wealthy families--has found voluntary easements successful in its north end. But many average-income landowners in southern Fauquier simply cannot afford to do the same. They can, however, take advantage of a purchase-of-development-rights program.

For example, recently the Piedmont Environmental Council purchased the development rights on a piece of property in Remington, saving it from becoming another housing project. The land was the location of the Battle of Rappahannock Crossing, a fact unknown to county officials until neighbors alerted them.

Innovations like the PDR program and the JTHG collaboration are essential. With historic tourism a profitable undertaking, and investors willing and able to ante up, the JTHG coalition feels it will be able to accomplish its objective: to preserve historically significant land while protecting landowners' rights to profit from their holdings. The JTHG collaboration is a welcome cohort in the preservation army.