But Knight is unconvinced. He said heritage areas are ill-disguised political "pork" because of the federal money they bring.
"Congressmen see them as pork they are delivering to their constituents. Republicans and Democrats are equally terrible on this issue. . . . It cuts across party lines because everybody likes pork," he said.
One land-use issue that heritage areas clearly seek to address -- a problem that this 175-mile trek particularly confronts -- is the number of jurisdictions that operate independently, often communicating poorly with neighboring governments and jealous of local prerogatives. The problem is compounded for the Journey area because it encompasses three states, a dozen counties and many towns and cities.
"There's not a tradition of cross-jurisdictional planning," Nieweg said. "There's no regional land-use planning."
In Adams County, Pa., for example, where Gettysburg is located, there are 34 separate municipalities, 13 boroughs and 21 townships with land-use authority. Developers have proposed 60 housing projects in those jurisdictions. They would result in up to 14,000 housing units, dwarfing and overwhelming the borough of Gettysburg, a small town of 7,000 surrounded by battlefields, said Richard H. Schmoyer, director of the Adams County Office of Planning and Development. Schmoyer said it is essential the county improve coordination among jurisdictions, and he hopes a heritage area designation would help it do so.
"We're talking about a swathe of urbanization here, not suburbanization," he said. ". . . These projects are huge. The traffic alone would have enormous implications."
Further south along Route 15, at Oatlands, a plantation owned and managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a 277-home subdivision is moving forward. The homes will be built across the ridge from Oatlands, with new homeowners enjoying the views of the mansion's ornamental rose garden, where historic plant varieties are carefully labeled and visitors stroll under lush trellises, meandering on oyster shell pathways.
"People will pay $800,000 for homes in our viewshed and it's hard to welcome that," Nieweg said. "A large part of their value is what they can see from our investment."
Nieweg and other preservationists would like to raise awareness of the issues -- and money to buy properties that become available. He hopes a heritage area would help that goal.
Even officials at Monticello, which has been able to protect much of the landscape surrounding the famous home of Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president and drafter of the Declaration of Independence, think inclusion in a heritage area might be a way to promote the property. Visitation there has dropped to 1 percent to 6 percent each year for the past seven years.
"We've had a slow but perceptible decline in attendance," said Kat Imhoff, vice president for planning and facilities at Monticello. "We see the Journey as another way to spread the word."
