Hallowed Ground: Preserving America's Heritage

The Virginia Piedmont, the gently rolling country east of the Blue Ridge, is one of the nation's most treasured rural landscapes - and one of its most endangered. In 1993, the Walt Disney Company's announcement of its plan to build an American history theme park in Haymarket, Virginia, within miles of some of the area's most significant historic sites, sparked intense debate about the impact of the proposed development on the Piedmont and its residents. The struggle that ensued, and Disney's eventual withdrawal of the plan, focused international attention on this beautiful and historic part of the world. With evocative photographs and delightfully informative text, Hallowed Ground takes readers on an insider's excursion down the scenic byways and into the storied past of this special region.
Home to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and a host of other great Americans, the Piedmont's graceful foothills and fertile soil helped nurture the ideas that inspired the American Revolution. During the Civil War, Piedmont fields and forests became bloody testing grounds for the nation's survival at places like Manassas, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness. Today, the region's quaint villages and quiet valleys face a different kind of threat from a "blacktop and concrete revolution," as historian James M. McPherson notes in his introduction.
Whether in an image of the sunset reflecting off a puddle in a country lane in Delaplane, or in the story of Jack Jouett's midnight ride from Cuckoo Tavern to Charlottesville to warn Governor Jefferson that the British were coming, armchair travelers and born-and-bred Virginians alike will find in Hallowed Ground ample reason to preserve and protect the Piedmont.

In the mid^-seventeenth century, settlers from England and from Virginia's coastal plain began pushing beyond the fall line and into the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge. This was the initial chapter in America's long, spasmodic westward movement. The Piedmont, home to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Marshall, nurtured many of the architects of our revolution and Constitution. Many of the bloodiest and most critical battles of the Civil War were fought in the region. Thus, this land is truly "hallowed ground" for all who treasure our nation's past. In a wonderful work, part history, part travelogue, and part environmental survey, Abramson traces the development of the region from the rivalries of Native American tribes to the current efforts to cope with the urban overflow from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The chapters detailing the ongoing struggles between developers and "preservationists" is particularly interesting. The stunning photographs provide a vital insight into the sheer magnificence of the landscape, and the text is beautifully written and informative, particularly for the general reader. Jay Freeman