On September 24, 2007 a historic event occurred in Jefferson County: Walter Washington did with his farmland just what he had always wanted to do.
Along what would become known as Route 51, Samuel Washington, brother to both Charles Washington, the founder and namesake of Charles Town, and George Washington, the first U.S. President, built a lovely stone mansion, called Harewood, in the late 1760s. The house and its surrounding farmland have borne witness to history and to our county’s growth and growing pains. Dolly Payne Todd married future President James Madison at Harewood in 1794. Later, during the Civil War, Confederate Gen. Jubal Early advanced across the fields of Harewood to attack Gen. Sheridan at nearby Locust Hill in the 1864 Battle of Summit Point. Today Harewood is home to one of the last remaining marl wetlands and the unique wildlife it supports—such wetlands once blanketed our region but have since been lost to development.
Acknowledging the historic, ecological, and agricultural significance of his property, current owner and resident Walter Washington, a direct decedent of Samuel Washington, working with public and private institutions, secured the future of 219 acres surrounding his family homestead. Washington placed a permanent conservation easement on his property. That is, he sold the development rights of his property without selling the property itself. In plain speach, the property can never be subdivided for such things as townhouses, yet another strip mall, or other development. Washington still retains ownership of the property, and he and all future owners can use, enjoy, and dispose of the property as they see fit (in accordance with the terms of the easement). They just can’t—to steal a line—pave it over and put up a parking lot.
Our own local nonprofit land trust, The Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle, teamed up with The Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board. Together they pooled funds and expertise not only to buy Harewood’s development rights but to ensure that Washington’s express desires for future uses of the property—whoever the owner may be—are honored and enforced. As a result, the view that our grandchildren will see in the years is guaranteed to be the same one that Dolly enjoyed on her wedding day and General Early sized up before battle.
None of this would have been possible without the West Virginia Farmland Protection Act, a law with its own local history. In 1999 Jefferson County State Senator John Unger, in an effort to encourage more citizen involvement in the lawmaking process, contacted local activists to research, draft, and promote the passage of a West Virginia law. The intent was to create a mechanism to access federal funds available for the purchase of permanent conservation easements that protect notable properties. A rare, modern day “by the people for the people” type of thing. Set to the task, and without the hired guns of special-interest lobbyists, local citizens crafted and the West Virginia Legislature later adopted what became known as the West Virginia Farmland Protection Act of 2000. This endeavor was historic not only in its genesis but in its sensitivities. Instead of granting Charleston, as a matter of course, the authority to implement, administer, and fund the new program, the local drafters empowered county commissions to be in charge of land conservation measures within their borders. This represented a refreshing change from the constant mandates county commissions are usually saddled with by Charleston. Within weeks of its passage, Jefferson County was one of the first counties to give the options created by the new law a try. As a result, the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board was created.
To date, as a result of the work of the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board, 1,574 acres have been preserved from future development in Jefferson County. Statewide, 8,100 acres have been similarly protected. Furthermore, not one easement has been broken. That is, every parcel of land secured under this statute remains today just as it did on the day of closing. The same holds true nationwide, where courts have consistently upheld the validity of permanent conservation easements.
Of the many homes and mansions the Washingtons built in Jefferson County during the 1700s and 1800s, only Harewood remains in family hands. Walter intends not only for it to stay that way, but to make sure it also remains open farmland—as it always has. His choice to use the West Virginia Farmland Protection Act will keep his and his prominent family’s legacy alive for generations to come. Now
