"Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act"

[Barclay]

Heritage area debate

The House Natural Resources Committee spent the bulk of the time discussing the creation of a national heritage area in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, as Republican members were split on how the bill could affect private property rights.

The "Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act," H.R. 319, from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), would create a new national heritage area in the Route 15 corridor through Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The area would include historically significant sites such as Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

The committee approved a Democratic substitute measure replacing the property rights language in the bill with the "standard" property rights provisions in other heritage area bills by voice vote, but first rejected two GOP amendments on near party-line 15-22 votes.

One amendment would have prohibited the use of funds authorized in the bill for lobbying -- Democrats said the language was unnecessary. The second amendment would have required landowners in the heritage area to be notified of their inclusion via first-class mail.

[styler]

Re: "Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act"

There are currently three bills regarding this proposal: S-289, H-319, and H-1270. Search on the word "Hallowed" at the LOC to see details.

[Dignann]

Re: "Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act"

House approves heritage area

Corridor would run from Gettysburg to Va.

By Matthew Hay Brown

The Baltimore Sun [Baltimore, Md.]
October 25, 2007

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives voted yesterday to designate a corridor that runs from Gettysburg to Monticello as a National Heritage Area, over the objections of the Maryland congressman whose district lies at its heart.

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area would include Carroll, Frederick and Washington counties in Maryland, taking in such historic sites as Antietam National Battlefield, the Mother Seton Shrine and Camp David.

Federal recognition would give a Virginia-based private, nonprofit organization, which includes preservationists, businesses and local officials, up to $15 million in federal matching funds over 15 years to safeguard the historic sites along the 175-mile U.S. 15 corridor.

The legislation would give the partnership three years to develop an inventory of the region's attractions and recommend ways to protect, preserve and promote them.

"That land on which so much blood was spilled will be memorialized," said Frederick County Commissioner Mike Cady, who serves on several committees of the partnership. "Anybody that knows anything about our history recognizes that that was a very determinate piece of ground as to how our country was going to be formed."

The measure drew opposition from conservatives led by Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican whose Frederick County farm lies near the Monocacy National Battlefield.

Bartlett wrote to House Republicans before the vote that the proposal reflects "a big-government, big-spending philosophy that tramples over taxpayers' interests and private-property rights" and would submit Marylanders to the machinations of a private organization controlled by Virginians.

Bartlett expressed concern that the federal designation and the money behind it would help preservationists build momentum for restrictions on how property owners could use their land. He said his farm would not be affected because the portion closest to the battlefield lies in a flood plain.

Bartlett said he was an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal "before I read the fine print."

Supporters called the concerns of property owners unfounded.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Virginia Republican, said the measure would neither reduce the land-use authority of local, state or federal governments nor give any land-use authority to the nonprofit Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership.

The House voted 291-122 to approve the measure, which would designate six new heritage areas nationwide and authorize up to $90 million to fund them.

Bartlett was the only member of the Maryland delegation to oppose the proposal. The others supported it, with the exception of Democratic Rep. Albert R. Wynn, who did not vote.

The measure now goes to the Senate, which is expected to approve it, supporters said.

Stretching from the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., to Monticello, the home built by Thomas Jefferson outside Charlottesville, Va., the corridor includes eight presidential homes, 13 National Park Service properties and battlefields from the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

It also lies in the path of development expanding westward from Washington.

In 2005, the National Trust for Historic Preservation included the corridor in a list of the nation's 11 most endangered historic places.

The partnership came together more than a decade ago to safeguard that heritage. With $3 million raised privately, it has produced a travel guidebook, tourist maps, curriculum materials for teachers and a two-week summer camp for middle school students.

Cate Magennis Wyatt, a former Virginia secretary of commerce and trade who heads the partnership, said attendance at the region's historic sites, in decline for years, has begun to rebound but that more help is needed. She described federal recognition as primarily "honorific" but added that the money would help promote education and tourism.

She also spoke of creating a trust to purchase land from willing sellers at fair market value. That money would have to come from funds raised privately by the partnership because the legislation prohibits the use of the federal money to buy property.

Wyatt said the partnership has no interest in promoting restrictions on land use.

"Not only no interest, but no regulatory authority," she said. "I mean, even if we were interested in it, this bill specifically says there is no overriding authority. There is no effect on the local and state jurisdictions to decide land use."

Ann Corcoran was not convinced. She and other property-rights advocates see the federal recognition as the leading edge of a larger effort by preservationists "to ultimately restrict what people do with their properties."

Corcoran, who owns a farm that abuts Antietam National Battlefield in Western Maryland, said, "You wouldn't need it otherwise, would you? You can have all of these localities that want to promote tourism, which is just fine, they could all get together every month and plan tourist stuff, couldn't they?"

In a 2004 report, the Government Accountability Office acknowledged concerns that "provisions in some [National Heritage Area] management plans" could "encourage local governments to implement land use policies that are consistent with the heritage areas' plans."

But the agency also found that "national heritage areas do not appear to have affected property owners' rights."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.heritage25oct25,0,5838557.story

Eric

[Dignann]

Re: "Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act"

Congress Approves Designation

Last Step for 175-Mile 'Journey' Historic Area

By Sandhya Somashekhar

The Washington Post [Washington, D.C.]
May 1, 2008

A proposal to declare a 175-mile stretch from Monticello to Gettysburg a National Heritage Area has cleared its final legislative hurdle and awaits President Bush's signature.

The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to grant the designation to the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, a corridor that encompasses parts of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Senate approved the measure last month.

For three years, activists and legislative leaders have been seeking the designation, which they say will boost tourism and bring federal grants to an area with a high concentration of presidential homes, Civil War battlefields and other historic sites.

"Boy, it has been a long road," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), one of the main proponents of the legislation. "It truly is hallowed ground, and I think it is really where American history began."

The legislation was controversial when Wolf introduced it in 2006. Property-rights groups and conservative activists argued that such designations can be used to limit development.

Supporters noted that the designation does not include limits on development. But critics said it would give ammunition to those who want to preserve an upscale, quaint way of life.

"The brains behind this . . . in the Piedmont area have a long history of antipathy toward growth," said Ronald D. Utt, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Utt wrote a paper last year critical of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, which raised money and lobbied for the legislation.

"It gives them an opportunity to essentially invoke all these things and stop growth they simply view as tacky."

Advocates of the proposal acknowledge that one of the reasons they are pleased with the designation is that it will bring attention to the region's historical significance and natural beauty, and that this could ultimately help protect it.

"I think that when there's an awareness of something, it is a certain level of protection in itself," said Suzie Blanchard, an owner of the Inn at Meander Plantation in Madison, Va. "We have nice, beautiful vistas. We have a view of the mountains. We look over fields and woods. It wouldn't be the same looking over houses."

Among the sites in the heritage area is the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, where 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after a 12-hour battle Sept. 17, 1862. There are nine former homes of U.S. presidents, said Cate Mages Wyatt, president of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership.

But the greatest beneficiaries will be the lesser-known attractions such as the Graffiti House outside of Culpeper, Wyatt said. The walls inside what was believed to have been a field hospital bear the scrawlings of Union and Confederate soldiers who were there during the war. As part of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, the museum is likely to see an infusion of visitors, she said.

"We all are subject to taking for granted the riches in our own backyard," Wyatt said. "It is a reminder to others that we are blessed by living in this remarkable area."

If signed into law by Bush, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground will join 37 other areas in the National Park Service's National Heritage Area program, which is designed to highlight areas of historical, cultural and natural significance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/30/ST2008043002216.html

Eric