Attention, Westmoreland: Don't want to talk sentiment? Then how about cents?
FOR ANYONE who values history, it's Groundhog Day. Again. Tomorrow, the Westmoreland County Board of Supervisors may vote on a new zoning ordinance that fails to protect the county's historic resources--unfortunately repeating the history of other jurisdictions that have, too late, recognized the value of what they've lost.
If Virginia is the "mother of presidents," Westmoreland County is surely the cradle, as road signs proudly proclaim. Home of the Washingtons, the Lees, the Monroes, and other founding families, the county may contain the richest historic soil in the nation. Happily, George Washington's birthplace is protected, as is Robert E. Lee's. But just a month ago, over the protests of preservationists, Westmoreland County supervisors approved an 84-home development right next to the location of James Monroe's birth. Without provision in the new zoning ordinance, what other irreplaceable historic treasures will fall?
Virginia is known throughout the nation for its efforts to preserve history. Yet even in the Old Dominion the shortsighted sometimes opt for present profits over preservation. Thomas Jefferson saw his rural retreat, Poplar Forest, as "the most valuable of my possessions." Yet the city of Lynchburg bought up the Lower Field associated with the plantation, and zoned it for industrial development. Preservationists had to ante up $3 million to take it off the market. Civil War battlefields constantly face encroachment by tract housing and its retail remora, most famously at Chancellorsville. Only Herculean efforts snatched that ground from the bulldozer's blade.
Change happens; no one suggests outlawing growth. In fact, guarding historic resources is not incompatible with economic development, as Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the state's Department of Historic Resources, points out. "The challenge is finding a way to manage that change to do right by the community," she says, noting that "historic resources are broad-ranging assets with future value." They are cultural, educational, environmental, and economic currency--tourism is the third-largest industry in Virginia. Further, the department stands ready with funds and expertise to help local governments identify their historic assets and grow in a way that allows them to "hang on to what they have."
Historic features, some of which may today look like a vacant field or overgrown woodlot, will be gobbled up by thoughtless growth unless protected. Cradles have sides for a reason: to protect the precious resource sleeping inside. Westmoreland, out of sheer self-interest, should identify and set zoning boundaries around its own irreplaceable treasure--its historic resources.