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Cate
Magennis Wyatt has a plan to save the land she
loves, the farms and hamlets of Virginia's northern
piedmont, from being overwhelmed by Northern
Virginia population
growth and development. Her
strategy doesn't entail imposing curbs on property
rights or restrictions on home builders. It starts,
innocuously enough, with summer camps designed to
connect 6th, 7th and 8th graders with the region's
rich history.
Every
day campers get an assignment to visit a historical
site and reenact the history that took place there.
Each child is assigned the name and background of a
historical individual -- one of John Brown's raiders
at Harper's Ferry, for instance, or a freed
African-American slave at a one-room school house --
and told to reenact their role.
Instead
of playing video games or hanging out at the mall,
kids dress in period costume,
walk across battlefields, kayak down the Potomac
River and interact with historical interpreters.
Armed with iPods, cameras and video cameras, they
create documentaries of their experiences.
"They
learn the complicating circumstances, the decisions that were
made," says Wyatt, who as president of
the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, is
the guiding force behind the program. "At the
end of the day, they're asked, 'Would you have done
the same thing?' They learn that common men and
women made really difficult decisions, putting their
lives and livelihood on the line. They learn that's
part of what it means to be an American."
Not
only does the summer camp counter the historical
amnesia afflicting so many Americans today, it
generates awareness of the historical and cultural
treasures that run like gold seams through a
three-state region -- from Monticello through
Gettysburg. In just a couple of years, the
educational outreach has been so successful, says
Wyatt, that it's being extended from students and school teachers
to grown ups with a hankering for history.
Educational
awareness is one element of a broader strategy to
build the Journey Through Hallowed Ground into a
nationally recognized tourist destination. Unlike a
Disney World or Las Vegas built by giant
corporations, though, the Journey is a grassroots movement
encompassing local governments, main street
communities, vineyard owners, equestrians, organic
farmers, shopkeepers, restaurateurs, B&B
proprietors, and caretakers of historical sites as
famous as James Madison's Montpelier estate and as
obscure as the Goose Creek Bridge on a Civil War-era
turnpike.
In
Wyatt's estimation, heritage sites and historic
downtowns coupled with a sustainable agricultural
sector can create a high quality of life for local
citizens, support local businesses and create the
economic conditions to counter "unmindful"
suburbanization from the Washington metropolitan
area. If she's right, Journey Through Hallowed
Ground Partnership could represent a novel approach -- underpinned by property rights and a
market economy -- to landscape and historic
conservation.
In
Virginia, as elsewhere around the country, the
typical reaction to the challenge of growth and
development is to demonize developers as the bad
guys, invent new restrictions on property rights and
enact more growth controls. But
Wyatt is a committed capitalist as well as a
conservationist. As a work-out specialist for large
properties owned by ITT, the Hartford Insurance
Company and failed S&Ls in the 1980s, she had a
hand in shaping development projects in Fairfax and
Loudoun Counties.
Later, she brought
her skill at transforming under-performing assets to
the job as Virginia's Secretary of Commerce and
Trade in the Wilder administration, a period marked
by recession and a downturn in Virginia's defense
industry.
At
the end of the Wilder administration in 1994, Wyatt
married husband Steve and moved with him to London,
from where they ran an oil business in Kazakhstan and
she shuttled back and forth to Moscow to
build a retail enterprise there. After several
eventful years, they moved back to Waterford, a
village founded by 18th century Quakers in Loudoun
County, to raise their two children.
Rather than
block unwanted development through growth controls,
Wyatt's vision
is to create opportunity for existing inhabitants
and enterprises. With a vibrant economy,
she hopes, Hallowed Ground landowners can generate enough
value from their property that they will spurn the
temptation to convert it into suburban
subdivisions and shopping centers, or, if it is of
historic value, turn to the JTHG Partnership to
purchase it at fair market value.
"The
historic Main Street communities, the bucolic,
undulating hills and vineyards, the equestrian
industry ... are
unparalleled attractions if you look nationally,
even internationally," Wyatt says. "We
want to ensure that these attractions remain viable.
... We can work collaboratively to support existing
businesses and build a sustainable industry of
heritage tourism."
The
economic development strategy of Journey Through
Hallowed Ground Partnership is based upon three principle
interlocking parts: heritage tourism, sustainable agriculture and small, historic downtowns. Heritage
tourism forms the basis of a regional brand, The
Journey Through Hallowed Ground, as a region
redolent with history: Civil War and Revolutionary
War battlefields, presidential homes, historic
buildings and homes and African-American heritage.
Working farms and estates support postcard-perfect
farmlands as well as attractions ranging from
vineyard tours to the Gold Cup steeple chase. And
the Main Streets of small towns provide picturesque
settings amidst historical architecture for
boutiques, shops, spas and restaurants in a friendly
walking environment.
This
combination of elements creates a genuine synergy,
says Lisa Capraro, downtown coordinator for the Town
of Leesburg. "The people taking the Journey are
already interested in history. They're also
interested in the architecture of your downtown,
your small shops. ... The Journey attracts the kind
of visitor who appreciates the value of a Main
Street instead of a fabricated version of it."
Likewise,
the Journey positions the historic attractions of
Loudoun County in a larger framework, notes Cheryl
Kilday, president of the Loudoun Convention and
Visitors Association. Loudoun can boast of numerous
sites of historical interest -- the Balls Bluff
battlefield park, the Oatlands plantation, the home
where General George Marshall wrote the Marshall
Plan -- but none has the critical mass by itself to
draw large numbers of visitors. "We have
wonderful stories to tell," Kilday says. "We can leverage our
resources with our colleagues along the
Journey."
As
the region gains recognition for its special
attributes, another positive dynamic kicks in:
gentrification. Much as Yuppies rehab old homes in
historic city neighborhoods, affluent households
snap up old farmsteads and run-down Victorian
houses in villages like Madison, Gordonsville and
Purcellville. The newcomers have the financial means
to renovate historic houses, maintain bed and
breakfasts and open trendy, upscale shops that
appeal to tourists as well off as themselves. In
contrast to urban gentrifiers, who tend to stay
aloof from the poor, inner-city residents they
displace, newcomers to the countryside create jobs
and opportunities for country residents.
Wyatt
has developed a detailed strategic plan for the
Journey. After three years of effort, she's worked roughly
half way through her list of priorities.
Outreach.
An early task for the JTHG Partnership was creating
legitimacy for the very idea that there was such a
thing as a Journey Through Hallowed Ground. A key
initiative was underwriting a lush coffee-table book featuring
work by National Geographic photographer Kenneth
Garret and written by historian and Los Angeles Times veteran
Rudy Abramson. In another project, the partnership
published a tour guide, with a forward written by
Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brroks, that travelers
can use to plan excursions through the region.
More recently, the JTHG Partnership has employed a full-time employee
who packages heritage tours, lining up all the
vendors and partners needed, as Wyatt puts it, to
"create experiences people will never get
elsewhere."
The
inventory of historical sites and organized tour
sites gives Wyatt credibility when she drums up
national exposure in such media outlets as the Smithsonian
Magazine, the National Geographic Traveler
and Public Broadcasting.
Another
goal is to create buy-in for the project locally.
The indefatigable Wyatt has reached out to
innumerable county boards, town councils, downtown
boosters, tourism bureaus, Rotary clubs and other
natural allies -- 150 groups last year alone. Her
message: "We
see an economic opportunity here…. You’re
welcome to be a partner." The JTHG initiative has won
endorsements from nearly every town, city and
village between Charlottesville and Gettysburg, Pa.
Education.
The JTHG Partnership has built on its local history by organizing education programs for
school children. Peruse the Journey website,
and you'll find a series of field trip guides,
training materials and teaching lessons geared to
the Standards of Learning requirements of Virginia,
Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Around
the Culpeper Museum and Burgandine House, just to
take one random example, the Journey has organized four different
tours and learning experiences. In one tour, "students
will have an opportunity to visit with Civil War era
soldiers and civilians, learning first hand the
difficult times of camp life, home life and battle."
In a hands-on study, "after hearing a
presentation on the history of the cemetery,
students are assigned a specific soldier, locate his
grave, and record the information found on the
gravestone."
Federal
Designations. The outreach and educational
components of Journey Through Hallowed Ground are
far along. Now Wyatt's attention is focused on
gaining federal recognition of the 175-mile corridor
as a National Heritage Area. Although the
designation is largely of symbolic importance, it
does come with a modest amount of money, about $1
million a year, to promote educational programs. The
recognition, she says, would amount to a
Congressional "Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval" that is critical for branding the
region as a destination of national significance.
In
a related initiative, Wyatt is seeking federal
designation of U.S. 15 as a National Scenic Byway.
The scenic byway status would provide modest additional funding for engineering and improvements
-- things like wooden guardrails, roadside plantings
and context-sensitive design materials.
Agriculture.
The Journey is only beginning to focus its attention
on the agricultural economy. Wyatt's ideas are
still half-formed. But she envisions an economic
base built on agricultural niches: raising horses,
bottling wine, raising organic foods for local
markets, creating locally branded fruits and
cheeses. The United Kingdom has a program, Eat
the View, that could provide a model.
The
goal of Eat the View, which concluded in 2006, was
to improve the market for regional produce by
helping consumers "understand the connections
between the goods they buy and the countryside they
value." The program had a heavy
emphasis on food safety, sustainable land management
and landscape preservation. If similar connections
could be made between the Hallowed Ground region and
the eight million inhabitants of the
Baltimore-Washington metroplex, the market for local
food products could expand exponentially.
In
the Journey Through Hallowed Ground region, farms
would function as an integral part of the tourism
economy. Working farms would preserve scenic vistas
that appeal to tourists. Vineyards would hold wine
tastings, horse farms would support steeple chases and
organic farmers would keep colorful farmer markets
supplied with fresh produce. One hand washes the
other.
Land
Investment Trust. In what could prove to be her
most revolutionary idea, Wyatt proposes to create a
land investment trust that would acquire land and
manage or develop it in a socially responsible
manner. "If we're serious about keeping the
landscape intact," she says, "we have to
be prepared to pay fair market value for the
land."
Wyatt isn't looking for any short cuts: no
diminishment of property values through government
takings. She's
borrowing from a relatively new concept, socially
responsible investing. Investors would buy shares in
the trust knowing that its managers are not trying to
maximize financial returns. But it's not a
philanthropy either -- there would be
financial returns in addition to the social benefits. The
trust might acquire land to safeguard assets of
special historical or cultural significance. It
might purchase property, place conservation
easements on it, and then put it back on the market. The
trust might purchase timber lands in order to
practice selective cutting rather than clear
cutting. Or it might initiate a development project
to meet the market demand for housing or commercial
space in a manner that respects the historical
heritage, the view sheds and the architectural tone
of the community.
Such
a trust, which would need some $400 million to $500
million in capitalization to have the kind of impact
that Wyatt envisions, would be managed for long-term
returns. Presumably, investors would be local
inhabitants who would benefit first hand from the social benefits. The
concept is very much in the idea stage, however, Wyatt says,
and won't become a priority until the U.S. Congress
passes the National Heritage Area designation.
Virginia's
northern piedmont is not alone. Large swaths of the
state -- the Shenandoah Valley, the Tidewater
country bordering the Chesapeake Bay, the counties
on the periphery of the Richmond and Hampton Roads
New Urban Regions -- face similar challenges. They
are searching for new economic underpinnings to
replace the evaporating agricultural/light industrial
economy that has served them for decades. At the
same time, they desperately want to preserve their
down-home character in the face of leapfrog suburban
development radiating from Washington, Richmond and
Hampton Roads.
What
works for Hallowed Ground country could work for
other parts of the state. The Valley has an
abundance of charming small towns. The counties
bordering the James River arguably have more history per
square mile than anywhere else in the country -- the Hallowed
Ground not excluded. The Chesapeake Bay
offers extraordinary coastline and recreational
opportunities. What none of these regions have,
however, is a shared vision of the future, a
Cate Wyatt to articulate that vision or the dense
skein of partnerships to make it real.
But
nothing succeeds like success. If the Journey
Through Hallowed Ground Partnership manages to
transform the economy of the northern piedmont while
preserving its special character, it will have
accomplished something rare and extraordinary. You
can rest assured that many other regions throughout
Virginia -- indeed, across the country -- will seek
to replicate the experience.
-- April
16, 2007
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