Taking Us Home, Country Roads

Taking Us Home, Country Roads

Area country roads will be protected, hopefully in perpetuity.

Photo by Vicky Moon

By Emma Boyce

Some of the more unique features often taken for granted in western Loudoun are the unpaved rural roads in a network spanning nearly 300 miles and encompassing more than 300 years of complicated history.

As eastern Loudoun continues to boom and development continues to wipe out the past, America’s Routes, a dedicated group of journalists and preservationists led by Jane Covington of Middleburg, has ensured that these scenic routes remain a part of everyday life.

After years of advocating for the roads, America’s Routes has done the near impossible. In June, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources declared the roads eligible for the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places, a distinction normally reserved for battlefields and buildings.

That unprecedented move came only a few months after Preservation Virginia added the road network to its 2020 list of “Most Endangered Historic Sites” as a “living museum.”

“We wanted the roads to be recognized for their history,” Covington said. “It’s not just a road that hasn’t yet been paved.”

Covington’s extensive background in historic preservation has taken her across the globe from London to Tanzania to Loudoun County. Her award-winning restoration firm has also had another project, Rock Hill, placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s no surprise she’s had another great success in saving thee roads.

Next, Covington plans to focus on proper rural road maintenance, working with VDOT to find a gravel that maintains the integrity of the roads and functions safely.

“These roads are an asset we must treasure and steward and bring forward for the next generation,” she said.

Since the 1990s, citizen groups have been working to preserve the roads. In 2015, Covington and fellow preservationist Mitch Diamond attempted to protect all of western Loudoun from development, a herculean task.

In 2017, they narrowed their focus to the roads of western Loudoun. After meeting with acclaimed photojournalist Douglas Graham and local writer Danielle Nadler in the basement of the Leesburgbased Loudoun Now newspaper, America’s Routes was born. The organization, which later included Horse Times editor Emily Houston and author Rich Gillespie, aims to preserve the physical roads and way of life attached to this slower pace, while also preserving their history.

“Our goal,” said Covington, “is educating the public as to how fabulous the roads are in terms of their history and stories. We want to document all these wonderful stories of the roads and the characters who use them, and then we also want dive into the archives which are now closed and bring those stories forward.”

Many of these roads appear on Loudoun’s first map, the Yardley-Taylor map of 1853, but their history dates to before the American Revolution, with the roads playing a significant role in transporting food from mill to market.

“This is not your average historic area,” Graham said. “This is where the rural economy was born. The whole country grew from these roads. It’s something that is very special and unique to have that vast a road network still intact.”

Graham knows the network well. In fact, he spends a lot of time winding through its bucolic twists and turns, camera in hand, using photographs to educate people on the importance of preserving something as deceptively ordinary as a gravel road. Along the road, Graham captures aging red barns, solitary stone walls, fog settling across the Blue Ridge Mountains, angus cows, cyclists.

He might see Allen Cochran marching his sheep up the road in Lincoln, Virginia when it’s time to rotate fields; or any given hunt on a fall morning thundering across the gravel in hot pursuit; or even visitors from Washington, D.C. escaping the city, admiring the stone walls along the roads.

“Doug Graham’s photographs will make anyone swoon,” said Covington. “He’s done so much to render their beauty visible to the public. Too often we’re looking through a dirty windshield, and a dust cloud. We don’t understand what’s there.”

ODE TO THE GRAVEL ROAD

By John B. Denegre

Written for the “America’s Routes” rural roads preservation effort, with heartfelt apologies to Robert Frost.

Whose road this is I think I know. It’s owned by all who cherish slow; They will know I’m stopping here To honor with steps the stones below.

Once a deer and Indian track Now mottledgravel, not asphalt black. Toil of commerce, blood of war, Have flowed across its noble back.

Its rural strengths with us will stay: Connection, reflection, nature’s way. Lacking oil and tar, this road will give Things much needed in lives today.

The name of progress gets roads covered, And who we were, and are, is smothered. Some say these paths are too much trouble; They thrive through time when gently mothered.

This road is lovely, warm and sweet, But needs our promises to keep The miles of joy we wish to meet, The miles of joy we have to keep.