It further described Buckland as an "early industrialized stagecoach town developed between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War that still retains most of its original buildings and landscape."

The Cultural Landscape Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of cultural landscapes, which it defines on its Web site as any "geographic area that includes cultural resources and natural resources associated with an historic event, activity, or person."

This can be anything from a 1,000-acre estate to a scenic highway, or small cemetery.

Historians hope that if properly preserved, these areas can serve as tangible cultural narratives, connecting people with history in a real and visceral way.

Buckland boasts an unusually high concentration of historical artifacts, and has remained relatively undisturbed since the 18th century.

 

Preservationists meet

On Sept. 24, members of the Buckland Preservation Society met with Prince William's Brentsville District Supervisor Wally Covington at David Blake's Buckland Farm to discuss the foundation's upcoming announcement.

All of the Preservation Society members in attendance own land in the Buckland historic district, and part of their motivation is to save the site from development. Currently, they own about 80 percent of the property within the historic district.

Blake, the president of the society, presented a slide show highlighting the village's history.

"These modest places are really what Virginia was," said Blake, as he showed a current photograph of Buckland that looks remarkably similar to a drawing done more than 140 years ago.

He noted that Buckland is still officially a town; it never lost the charter granted by the General Assembly in the late 18th century.

Currently, the Buckland Preservation Society is trying to determine Buckland's original town boundaries, described in accounts and drawings made of the 1863 Battle of Buckland Mills during the Civil War.

The original town is estimated to have been laid out over about 1,000 acres.
Today, 19 acres—including the original buildings in the center of the village—are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

 

Experts weigh in

Many historians recognize Buckland as an opportunity to educate citizens about what a typical modest 18th-century town looked like.

According to Carter Hudgins, director of the Department of History and American Studies at Mary Washington College, "There is no better laboratory and no better place at which they can make a truly significant addition to what we know about Virginia in that early national period, than Buckland."

By the end of the 18th century, Buckland was a thriving stagecoach town, with a tailor, cooper, two taverns, an apothecary and a church.

A number of famous figures have passed through the town, including Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Lafayette, J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee.

Due to its mills and proximity to the Alexandria-Warrenton Turnpike (which is now U.S. 29), the town was a major target during the Civil War, but it emerged from the conflict surprisingly intact.

Currently, it is considered the best-preserved example of an early Piedmont model town in the state.

 

Real threats

It's for good reason that Buckland is being called an endangered cultural landscape; like many rural historical sites, the town is threatened by urban sprawl and road expansion.

When U.S. 29 was widened to four lanes about 50 years ago, Buckland residents were relieved that only four of its 48 plots were affected.

But the current proposal to expand U.S. 29 would do much more damage, adding at least two lanes that would cut right through the existing historic district.

Being named an Endangered Historical Landmark is a mostly symbolic designation, which will not grant Buckland any special privileges.

The society hopes the designation will draw enough attention to the area to prevent U.S. 29 from being expanded, and perhaps have the crowded highway— which is a direct connector to Interstate 66—relocated so that it bypasses the village.

It is perhaps the most critical issue that residents of Buckland will face.

"If we can't do something with the road, we'll all be forced to leave this place," Blake said. "But I'll do it with good conscience, that I've done everything I can to fight this."

This article was reprinted with the permission of the author.