Rapidan River - Clark Mountain Rural Historic District

The Rapidan River - Clark Mountain Rural Historic District is a nearly 40,000 acre historic landscape in Orange County and parts of Madison and Culpeper Counties that has been determined eligible for listing on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places for its high concentration of historic resources dating from the prehistoric period through the 1930s. 

The district contains a wide range of historic sites, from grand houses like Meander (c.1766), Greenway (c.1788) and Brampton (c.1846), to the Hopewell Baptist Church (c.1881), the Rapidan Train Depot (c.1876) and Taylor Sylvania Barn (c.1920) to remnants of the Civil War era Rapidan Line and sites associated with early Native American groups that once resided in the area.

The resources are important for their association with broad patterns of history with areas of significance including the Civil War, agricultural history, industry, geography and hydrology, and social history, including early settlements, African-American communities, 20th-century migration patterns.

The resources are locally significant for their distinctive characteristics of construction, but also for the aesthetic created by the surviving patterns of agricultural fields and riverine woodlands flanking the waterway, dotted with a mix of domestic and agricultural architectural survivals ranging from high style to vernacular buildings. The proposed district also has the potential to yield important historic and pre-historic information.

There are a number of benefits associated with the creation of a rural historic district.

• First, landowners of properties within a listed rural historic district can use historic preservation as a qualifying purpose under the IRS regulations, when taking a charitable deduction for a conservation easement.

• Second, the process of creating a rural historic district is a powerful place-making tool, that educates residents and landowners within the proposed district about the history of their property, leading them to develop a better understanding about its significance and deeper pride in their property.

• Third, Virginia Code requires the SCC to minimize impacts to historic districts when siting transmission lines.

Taken together, the benefits of rural historic districts associated with the discouragement of transmission line siting, qualifying purpose under IRS regulations and increased pride of place are very strong motivators for future conservation.

In the more than 25 years since the Madison-Barbour and Southwest Mountains Rural Historic Districts were listed, levels of conservation in these areas have grown to more than 40% of the districts being protected.

Following a listing of the Rapidan River- Clark Mountain RHD on the National Register of Historic Places, we expect to see increased levels of conservation within the district, a broader understanding and appreciation of the history of the area and the resources encompassed within it.

• Use the arrows to move from place to place.
• The map is interactive. You can zoom in and out, and click on points to see more information about them.

If your property is located within the proposed historic district, or you have information to share about resources within the district, we’d love to hear from you!

If our consultants, Fairfield Foundation, contact you for access to your property, please grant them permission to survey.

To learn more or share relevant information with us, please contact Kristie Kendall, PEC’s Historic Preservation Coordinator.

k kendall@pecva.org 

540-347-2334 x.7061

•  PEC's Preliminary Information Form , submitted to the Virginia DHR.

•  PEC's web page about Rural Historic Districts .

•  PEC's web page about the Rapidan River-Clark Mountain Rural Historic District.