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The Winchester Star December 27, 2007
Modern technology will bring Clarke’s past to life

By Stephanie Mangino

Berryville — Sound and vision will tell Clarke County’s story of land conservation.

The Clarke County Historical Association is close to beginning the physical work of creating new, state-of-the-art exhibits at its museum at 32 E. Main St. in Berryville.  The re-imagined museum will key to the concept "Our Land is Our Legacy."  If all goes as hoped, work on the existing museum will begin in March or April. Exhibit installation will probably begin in late fall 2008, said Roger Chavez, vice president of the association’s board and chairman of its museum committee.  "We’re angling to be open in the spring of ’09," Chavez said.  The exhibits, which will be housed in three rooms, will use sound, light, and video to help bring Clarke County’s history — from 1670 to the present — to life, according to Chavez and Jennifer Lee, the Historical Association’s executive director.

A fourth room will be turned into a library/research room.  Some of the county’s story will be told through an audio-visual experience in which "the voices of the land" are revealed. While a narrator guides the program, "soundscapes of period music ... sound effects, [and] clips from oral histories" will play as imagery is highlighted on murals and items of historic importance receive similar attention, reflecting the county’s evolution, according to an AV treatment on the exhibit.  "It’s ingenious," Chavez said of the exhibit, designed by Cultural Communications of Bluemont.

"And it’s expensive," Lee added.  "This makes these objects come alive," Chavez said. It also shows how they fit into the county’s history and culture.  That culture has always been based around the conservation and stewardship of land. However, that conservation has not been for exclusively altruistic purposes.  It was often as economically driven as it was conservation-minded in a county looking to maintain agricultural life, Lee said.

Over the years, many different groups have helped create Clarke County’s landscape. It began with the Native Americans, states a draft version of the pamphlet that is expected to guide visitors through the museum.  European settlements appeared in the early 1700s, with a major event occurring when Lord Fairfax provided his land agent, Robert "King" Carter, with a 50,000-acre land grant, including most of the current Clarke County.

"Wealthy Virginia Tidewater planters, some original descendants of King Carter, abandoned tired tobacco plantations. They purchased or inherited large tracts from King Carter’s original grant and brought with them African slaves to clear the land to make large-scale wheat farming possible," the museum pamphlet’s draft version states.  Those slaves physically built Clarke County, Chavez said. "They did the work."  Following the Civil War, Northerners interested in good, fertile land that was also suitable for fox hunting bought up large tracts and maintained them, Chavez said.  In the era between 1880 and 1940, a railroad helped provide new markets for the county’s agricultural products. Also, "large-scale commercial orchards revitalized the landscape and the economy," the draft guide states.

By the 1930s, dairy farms were also making an impact.  In the modern day, the Clarke County government became one of the agents of conservation, when, in the 1980s, it established sliding-scale zoning, which limits dwelling-unit rights on rural properties and aims to keep larger parcels of land intact, according to the draft guide and Chavez.  Lee told the county’s Board of Supervisors on Dec. 18 that the association had raised $134,000 of the $230,000 needed for the new museum installations. At that time, she asked the group for $49,000 in assistance — $10,000 of which would be used for construction/renovation work at the museum. The remaining $39,000 would be used for the "Clarke County Album."  The album would be a 6- to 8-minute presentation of video and digital information dealing with the county’s "land-based history and heritage from 1950 to today," states another treatment by Cultural Communications.  According to Chavez, the firm was initially engaged by the association in 2004 to help determine if it would be possible to put together a museum based on conservation.

The album will also be featured in one of the museum’s rooms.  "If the county will fund the album, I think we’re on course for [opening in] spring of ’09," Chavez said.  The museum’s request has been forwarded to the county’s Finance Committee for further discussion.  So far, the campaign to create the re-imagined museum has attracted 70 to 75 donors, Chavez said.  "It’s not been an incredibly loud [fundraising] campaign," Lee said. Instead, appeals have primarily gone to people that are known to be interested in the county’s history.  Some of those who have donated live outside the county, but have a familial or emotional attachment to it, she said.  While the campaign has been purposely low-key, Lee said she would love to see as many donations as possible from the community, no matter the amount.  The museum will only get better with community support, she said.  If the museum draws many small donations, that will still mean that the community has made an investment and has ownership of the facility.  "And that’s what it should be all about," Lee said.

The Winchester Star April 16, 2007
Washington Rode Here
Clarke County’s colonial paths reappear under Matthew Mackay-Smith’s avid gaze

By Val Van Meter

OLD CHAPEL — Imagine a young George Washington, riding through an open woodland on a muddy trail, heading northward toward what will one day be the town of Berryville. It’s easy to do, looking down on the damp earth that Washington’s horse once trod, more than 250 years ago.

“You are standing on one of the first roads that brought Americans to the Valley,” said Dr. Matthew Mackay-Smith. The Clarke County resident, veterinarian, and horseman, who has explored his home county on horseback for decades, has been “collecting” old roads for at least that long. Now, he’s doing that officially for Clarke County’s Historic Preservation Commission.“I’m working from my observations and information my father gave me,” he said. His father, Alexander Mackay-Smith, also an avid foxhunter, was a founding member of the Clarke County Historical Association about 70 years ago. Clarke County has what Mackay-Smith believes is a unique opportunity. Thanks in part to the agrarian bent in the county and in part to a little luck, several slices of “antique” road still exist to tell the story of settlement patterns in the 1700s. For several years, Mackay-Smith has been documenting them, traversing the pathways, and photographing the imprints that still remain on the landscape. “I take 30 to 40 pictures per mile.” John Bieschke, chairman of the Clarke County Historical Preservation Commission, said “Matthew is the best person for the historic roads project, due to his advanced knowledge, passed on to him by his father.”

Another member of the commission often accompanies Mackay-Smith on his treks, Bieschke said. He hopes the mapping project will become an additional layer on the county’s GIS information system, so the county planners can consider it in land use decisions. “I hope this will become an integral part of the story of Clarke County,” Mackay-Smith said.

One of the first roads

On a recent sunny morning, he hosted Jennifer Lee of the Historical Society and Jane Radford of Cultural Communications on a tour of one of the first roads used by settlers to the Valley. At the end of Lime Marl Road, on private property, a few steps from a driveway, the trio stepped down 18 inches into the old roadbed. It runs “straight as a string” from this point south to Shan Hill Lane, Mackay-Smith said. From there, it curves around a hillock and heads for the old Tilthammer Mill site. He feels the trail came into use in part because of the geology of the area. Along the old route, there are a number of strong springs. “They liked to go near springs. It was a good source of potable water,” Mackay-Smith said. While the early settlers may not have had the ability to say E. coli, they knew it was best not to drink water straight from streams. Springs were safer water sources.

When the young George Washington rode down off the Blue Ridge Mountain and forded the Shenandoah River at Swift Shoals, the early trace he traveled forked. Today’s Carter Line Road marked its westward path. A right turn took Washington north, to John Pennington’s place, at the future site of Berryville. To get there, Washington would have ridden along this sunken roadbed, Mackay-Smith said, although it was probably not sunken when he traversed it. That came later.

The road led north, to the east of what is now U.S. 340, past the current site of Berryville’s water tower. It traversed the area where Boom Road is now, Mackay-Smith said, where another strong spring, Rattlesnake, awaited travelers.

The Clifton spring drew travelers northward.

North of Berryville, the antique road shows up clearly again, Mackay-Smith said, on the edge of the area known as Lewisville. The route would have taken the young George Washington on toward the area around Charles Town (W.Va.) where his brothers had laid claim to large tracts of land. When the area began to be settled, the roadways began to harden into place, instead of allowing travelers to make their own paths as the terrain suggested. Land was claimed on each side and early deeds measured ownership to the edges of the roadway, Mackay-Smith said.

Early records of the area show people appointed to oversee the condition of the roads. That involved a team of oxen and a pond scoop, Mackay-Smith said. The equipment was used to remove mud from the roads, scraping them down to more solid earth and rock. He points to limestone rocks, heaped to each side of the pathway. These were probably stacked up after being dragged loose during upkeep, he said. The sides of the pathway rose as the middle was dug out over the years.

That rocky soil is one reason the path remains, Mackay-Smith said. “The road tended to disappear where it crossed arable land,” he said. During the wheat frenzy of the 19th century landowners plowed up everything that would hold a seed.

This first road is important, because it shows the type of thoroughfare that enabled the settlement of the Valley.

It took 100 years

Although the English had gotten their foothold in the new world at Jamestown in 1607, it took them more than 100 years to top the Blue Ridge. The first map showing a road in the Valley was a British military map published in 1728, Mackay-Smith said. The problem was mostly cultural. There were few obvious horse trails and early explorers went on foot. But men of property, who could afford to purchase land, did not walk. “They were stymied, because they couldn’t ride over,” he said. Locating Ashby Gap opened the Valley to settlement, and its first settlers saw it from the back of a horse. And, Mackay-Smith added, as a horseman, he could understand what he was seeing as he traveled across the county on horseback. So he has volunteered to document the roads he knows.

Beyond the two earliest roads, there is plenty of room to document other early highways, too. “There are plenty of 18th century roads that still need to be done,” Mackay-Smith said. In the best possible scenario, Mackay-Smith can see the landowners who are contiguous or astride this road element, banding together to preserve it. There might even be a way, in the future, to allow it to become a learning experience for adults and children alike, Mackay-Smith said. “It could be woven into a tourist’s experience of the county.” Lee, executive director of the Historical Association, said the group is looking for funding to support the project and people to volunteer to carry it through. Anyone with skills in transcribing, filing or data entry is welcome, Lee said. After all, you might not be able to sleep in all the places the First President supposedly laid his head. But, Mackay-Smith said, “I know you can walk in his horse’s hoof prints.”