For 140 years, the town of Buckland was, in many ways, extinct. No post office stands among its stone houses and old mill. No mayor protects its interests. No chamber of commerce touts its 18th-century buildings. In effect, the town, on the Prince William County-Fauquier County border, had been locked away in a municipal time capsule.
Now, a quirky but savvy core of Buckland landowners is trying to revive the town under its original 1798 charter -- complete with elections and a Buckland mailing address. Beyond a renewed sense of civic duty, the group has a second aim: fighting the Virginia Department of Transportation. Residents hope that restarting the town and raising Buckland's historical profile will give it more clout to fight the state's plan to eventually widen the highway that runs through the middle of it.
A drawing of Civil War activity on Broad Run demonstrates the similarity of today's landscape to that of the 1800s along the Fauquier-Prince William border.
(Photos Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)
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"It's divided us and conquered us," said David W. Blake, the owner of Buckland Farm and the town's putative mayor-in-waiting, referring to busy Route 29. The highway carries 20,000 vehicles a day. Continuing growth in the area means more trucks and commuters.
While many area preservationists agitate for open space, Blake and a handful of Buckland residents have gone further -- digging into their pockets to buy more than a dozen town properties in the name of blocking suburban encroachment. They are willing to forgo tens of millions of dollars from developers to keep their town the way it is.
They have proposed conservation easements on the entire town and a nearby Civil War battlefield. Their enthusiasm is shared by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which places Buckland in the same rarefied category as Jamestown and Williamsburg.
"Between the sprawl and the road and the bridge, our window of getting this off the ground is diminishing," said Linda L. Wright, 53, a member of the newly formed Buckland Preservation Society and the owner of Cerro Gordo Farm, which has more than 60 acres.
The society's efforts have awakened interest in Buckland by historians and preservationists, who now see the town's past failure as an opportunity. Old buildings in Buckland were not demolished to make way for new ones, as they were in more successful towns. Today, Buckland boasts 17 structures from the 18th century -- about 80 percent of what was built. Much of the original town's land is intact and open.
"The neat thing about Buckland is that it is raw and pure; it remains the same as it was during Revolutionary times and the Civil War," said Margi Carpenter, a project director of the Washington-based Cultural Landscape Foundation, which aims to preserve historical context rather than just individual structures. Last week, the organization named Buckland one of the nation's seven most endangered landscapes.
"I don't think there's any other place with this kind of layering of history and private willpower to protect the land for the future, combined with the degree of threat that Buckland faces," said Rob Nieweg, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's southern field office.
As they battle roads and suburban growth, Buckland residents are discovering more about the town, its history and its strange but strong pull on those who call it home.
"It is all still here," said Blake, 44, whose family came to Virginia in 1650. "You just have to look for it."
The Town
In 1774, Samuel Love built Buckland Hall and bought the nearby mill on Broad Run. Soon, Buckland became a thriving mercantile outpost with a woolen factory, wheelwright, cooper, apothecary, shoemaker, saddle maker, church and two taverns.
In 1797, Samuel Love's heir, John Love, laid out 48 lots, and the next year he obtained a town charter from the Virginia General Assembly. The Marquis de Lafayette visited the Buckland tavern, and Love sold a horse to George Washington and wheat to James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Next came a road connecting Warrenton to Alexandria that ran through Buckland. By 1835, Buckland was a thriving stagecoach and Pony Express stop with two flour mills, a distillery and an inn. The population was about 180, including 50 free blacks, who were skilled craftsmen and owned homes and even had slaves, according to documents unearthed by Blake.
