Opinion: Virginia county resists growth to maintain its rural character and countryside

Civil War monuments at Culpeper National Cemetery
(National Cemetery Administration photo)

As urban sprawl and industrial developments eat up Virginia countryside, Rappahannock County turns against the tide to remain a quiet, rural area with a protected "view shed," writes Dana Milbank in his opinion piece for The Washington Post.

Culpeper National Cemetery sits on a corner of land in Culpepper, Virginia, and there you will find "the final resting place for about 1,300 Union soldiers killed in the Civil War. Stone monuments honor regiments from Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania that fought the battles of Cedar Mountain, Brandy Station and others nearby," Milbank explains. "But these hallowed grounds are about to become a monument to something else: the destruction of the American countryside.

"Look east from the cemetery, to an adjacent field where cattle graze, birds sing and a brook babbles: This will become a 116-acre data center housing 2.2 million square feet of massive structures with concrete walls up to 70 feet high. Look to the south from the cemetery at another green field: Here will rise the electrical substation powering the 600-megawatt monster."

Rappahannock County, Va.
(Wikipedia map)

While other Virginia counties take the "easy dollars" developers are waving, Rappahannock County has a different goal: To remain a part of the state's "dead zone," Milbank writes. "Its board of supervisors has for years rejected almost all development, and its population hasn’t grown at all. With 7,348 residents in the 2020 census, Rappahannock has roughly the same population it had in 2000 — and in 1920, for that matter. Rappahannock fends off development with its 25-acre minimum zoning requirement."

Keir Whitson, vice chairman of the board of supervisors, told Milbank, "I don’t even want to talk about growth. It’s not a word that should be in our active vocabulary." Milbank adds, "Whitson even torpedoed a local philanthropist’s plan to build three dozen affordable housing units in the town of Washington, Va., the county seat. He forced the already modest development to reduce its size to 18 apartments and townhouses. . . . It was a tough decision to reject what was, for the county, a gift of free affordable housing. It followed an easier decision to reject a 53-unit rental property on the approach to Shenandoah National Park."

Rappahannock's refusal of development dollars keeps the county on a meager budget, but residents are willing to bear that burden instead of managing the demands of growth. "While Culpeper and other nearby counties surrender to development, tiny Rappahannock has built a firewall to preserve its rural way of life," Millbank writes. "Similar tensions between development and rural character are playing out across the country. . . . Rappahannock has a plan: no development."

Rappahannock residents seem "content to live in a place with few amenities, few services and few jobs if it means preserving their unhurried rural life, their tightknit community, their panoramic views and their abundant wildlife."

Whitson told Milbank, “People say to me, pretty consistently, ‘Come on, buddy, get over it. You know Rappahannock County’s got to change. I’m like, ‘No, it doesn’t.’ I understand change is inevitable, but in Rappahannock County, change can be tiny, tiny change.” Milbank writes, "To save our countryside, we’re going to need a lot more such leaders with the courage to think small."