The GERMAN SETTLEMENT in Loudoun County, Virginia, encompasses the northern quarter of Loudoun County from the Potomac south some ten miles in the Catoctin and Between the Hills Valleys. Here settled German, Scots-Irish, and Quaker emigrants from Pennsylvania in the 1730s, leaving a rich historical and architectural heritage and determining the nature of Western Loudoun ever since. Through its museum in Lovettsville and heavy educational programming, theLOVETTSVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY has been the keeper and preserver of that heritage since 1976.
Descendants of those settlers still populate the farms and communities here as do those lured here by the fertile fields and historical charm. Over the past half century, many have chosen to stabilize and restore the early German log or stone buildingsand plumb the depths of their property’s and community’s history. In addition to a portion of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and Sweet Run State Park, two National Register Historic Districts now exist in the German Settlement, Lovettsville and Taylorstown, the first a town landscape, the second a village landscape to the east. The TaylorstownNational Register Historic District was created in 1978 in response to a previous historic landscape threat, the 1974 Taylorstown Dam project. The Lovettsville National Register District, created in 2012 by an effort of Town government, contains 174 buildings and a number of other sites and structures considered to be of historical significance and contributing to its National Register Historic District designation. In addition, many properties in the area have been put in conservation easement in hopes of protecting this fertile and historic landscape in perpetuity. Indeed, over the past half century, historic preservation has increasingly if quietly been celebrated in the German Settlement as awareness of the historic resource has grown. More and more of that landscapehas been carefully protected.
The Valley Link power line project drives right through the heart of the German Settlement, threatening historic viewscapesbordering the National Register Historic Districts and quiethistoric (and non-historic) properties that include houses, churches, and cemeteries. Construction and operation of high-voltage transmission lines with their massive 150 to 175-foot towers and 200-foot rights of way makes an idelible intrusion into the nature of this historic area. Once this landscape has been compromised, it is changed forever; there is no going back, whatever may happen to the electrical or data center industries in the coming decade.
The Lovettsville Historical Society Board feels it incumbent upon them as a leading history voice in the threatened area to stand by their mission and oppose the intrusion into the historicGerman Settlement of the Valley Link North project.