WP,pg1:Trust Decries Development In 3-State Historic Area(endangered list)

[DeepModem Mom]

Trust Decries Development In Three-State Historic Area
By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 3, 2005; Page A01


The 175-mile road trip between Gettysburg and Monticello is a sometimes traffic-clogged passage past flag-waving outlet malls and fast-emerging suburban outposts built to serve the Washington region's booming population.

But a journey through the lands near Route 15 also takes in six presidential homes, including James Madison's Montpelier, a concentration of Civil War battlefields from Antietam to Manassas, a million acres on the national historic register and the rolling Piedmont scenery that inspired the Founding Fathers.

Yesterday, Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, put the vast tri-state area on his group's annual list of the nation's most endangered historic places. Also among the 11 sites are a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Los Angeles, historic Catholic churches in Boston and decaying buildings in downtown Detroit.

Moe and other promoters of an area they call the "Journey Through Hallowed Ground" corridor said they are seeking to boost the profile of a diverse and threatened area near the nation's capital. They argue that the corridor has lost more than 150,000 acres of farmland since the early 1980s as population there has doubled.

"I think there is more significant history in this corridor than in any comparable space in America," Moe said. "There's been a lot of encroachment already, particularly in the form of residential development. If this continues, the character of this region will be changed forever."...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201761.html?sub=AR