THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606110497
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: 263 lines
THERE'S A ROADSIDE billboard along Virginia Route 3 as you enter Westmoreland County from the west that reads, ``Historyland Highway or Colonial Cowpath? Washington, Lee and YOU deserve a better corridor road.''
The call for political action - simple, straightforward black lettering on white background - defined the issue as clearly as any argument articulated by the Revolutionary patriots who once lived in this part of Virginia called the Northern Neck. There's a phone number to call if you agree.
I don't. Of course I don't live here in this rural part of Tidewater between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. If I did, maybe this ``Colonial cowpath'' - actually a two-lane asphalt highway that follows old Indian trails, climbing and dipping and winding through the gentle rolling landscape - might seem inadequate.
I don't agree because I am an urban dweller who travels all too often on what are supposed to be high-speed corridors but are frequently little more than traffic-clogged, slow-moving parking lots. All too often, when the traffic thins out, we speed (literally) past some of Virginia's most delightful attractions.
The charm of Route 3 through Westmoreland County is that it is NOT a corridor route, but a pleasant, lightly traveled pathway through the countryside . . . and through some our most historically fertile ground. That is why it is appropriately called Historyland Highway.
It is not the way to anywhere particular. You have to mean to come here.
I'd guess that most people on this road who don't live around here somewhere are people with time on their hands, people in search of a leisure destination - which is what Westmoreland County is.
Early on, this was a particularly good place for human blood lines. Two of our first five presidents were born here about 20 miles apart, and it produced more Lees than you could keep straight without a genealogy chart.
I think Virginians tend to take all this heritage for granted. We seemed to be surrounded by it. But just imagine taking a visitor from, say, North Dakota for a ride through here. George Washington was born right here, and James Monroe over there and Robert E. Lee just up that road there.
I bet your visitor from North Dakota would say something like, ``Gosh!'' and suggest there must be something in the water. It's got to be the water.
Here are five ways I enjoy spending a weekend getaway in Westmoreland County.
Washington's Birthplace. George Washington slept here first - from Day 1 in 1732 and for the next three-and-a-half years. Later, as an adolescent, he came back for several extended stays. But you have to use your imagination to picture the scene.
The National Park Service does its best to re-create the atmosphere of an 18th century middle-sized plantation manor and the middle-class landed gentry family into which the future first president was born, but ever since it took over the site in 1932 it has had to make the best of a not-very-good situation.
It is a beautiful site on the banks of Popes Creek, an inlet of the broad Potomac. Idyllic really, and an 18th century Colonial tobacco farm was anything but that. The house in which Washington was born burned on Christmas Day in 1779 when he was encamped with his Continental Army at Morristown, N.J.
Its site wasn't located and excavated until 1936, six years after what is now called the Memorial House was erected nearby. It is not a replica of the birthplace. No one had any idea at that time what it might have looked like. It represents a rather typical house of the upper classes of the period - probably a bit grander than what stood here.
After the original house site was excavated, its original foundations were covered over to preserve them. Today the location and dimensions are indicated by an oyster-shell outline.
What the Park Service has tried to do, with a short film and an exhibit-packed visitors' center, with reconstructed farm buildings and kitchen typical of the times, with livestock and herb garden, is to display the way of life into which Washington was born and the early scenes of his childhood.
Getting there: About two miles north of Route 3 on Route 204. Signposted. Open daily 9-5 except Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission $2. Info: (804) 224-1732.
Stratford Hall. This massive, H-shaped mansion of red brick, laid in Flemish bond with glazed gray headers, is an imposing site from the open oval at its front. Awesome, really. But my favorite views are of the house from the flower gardens to the west and from the house looking north out over rolling hills to the Potomac.
Even the barns are impressive, built as sturdily as the manor house. There are numerous signs explaining the role of the horse in the 18th century - all you could ever want to know.
All in all, it is a grandiloquent statement of the affluence, taste and style of the plantation aristocracy of 18th century Virginia.
Stratford Hall will always be known primarily as the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, the icon of the Confederacy. It is the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation that maintains the place as a working plantation.
On a house tour you can see the room where Robert was born in 1807, the cradle in which he slept as an infant, the iron angels in the fireplace the old soldier would years later recall with childhood fondness. But this was actually not even his ancestral home.
The Stratford patriarch was Col. Thomas Lee, who built the place in 1725-30 on 16,000 acres he had bought, part of which was land originally patented in 1651 by George Washington's great-great grandfather, Nathaniel Pope.
Thomas Lee had a large family. Four of his sons who grew up here were to play major roles in the early history of this nation: Richard Henry Lee first proposed a declaration of independence on June 7, 1776, and would later put his name to both that document and the Articles of Confederation, as did his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee; Arthur Lee, educated in medicine, became an American diplomat in Europe and a political essayist; and William Lee served as an American intelligence agent in Europe.
Another son of Thomas, Philip Ludwell Lee, had a daughter named Matilda, who married her second cousin Henry ``Light Horse Harry'' Lee of Leesylvania in northern Virginia. They moved to Stratford. After Matilda died, Light Horse Harry married Ann Hill Carter, and their first-born was Robert E. Lee. However, young Robert was to live only slightly longer at his birthplace than Washington had lived at his.
Light Horse Harry made such a mess of his finances that he ended up in debtors prison. Robert, his mom and the rest of the family moved from Stratford to Alexandria in 1811.
Getting there: About two miles north of Route 3 on Route 214 at Lerty. Signposted. Open daily 9-4:30. Admission $6. Info: (804) 493-8038.
Ingleside Plantation. The 2,500-acre plantation dates back to 1834. It's also served as a boys' school, a Civil War garrison for Union troops, a stand-in courthouse and a dairy farm. It's been in the Flemer family since the 1890s.
It's been a vineyard since Carl Flemer planted the first grapes in 1960, and an award-winning winery since 1980. Today Doug Flemer runs the winery, one of the largest in Virginia, and brother Fletcher the plant nursery.
Not long ago the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia asked Ingleside to develop a wine for communion. If you're an Episcopalian you've probably tasted their Colonial Red. It's a dessert wine they sell for $8.
In addition to the tasting bar and winery tour (both free), they have a European-style, open-air courtyard, a gift shop filled with all sorts of made-in-Virginia products, a Museum of Wine History of the Northern Neck (only one display case at the moment), and a separate Museum of Natural History with a lot of Native American artifacts from the area, plus stuffed versions of indigenous animals: bobcat, gray fox, mountain lion (a.k.a. cougar, puma and panther), black bear and Virginia white-tail deer (head only).
From May through October Ingleside is a major stop on the Rappahannock River Cruise out of Tappahannock (info: 804-453-2628). Ingleside also hosts several special events including Summer Jazz in the Courtyard (June 22, 2-6 p.m.), the annual Northern Neck Seafood Extravaganza (Sept. 14, 3-6 p.m.) and the Fall Barrel Tasting Nov. 9.
Getting there: About three miles south of Route 3 on Route 638 at Oak Grove. Open every day 10-5 except Sundays 12-5. Free. Info: (804) 224-8687.
Westmoreland Berry Farm & Orchard. Nutritionists say to eat five servings of fruits or vegetables a day. You can do that right here, right now. It's mostly a pick-your-own deal.
They have nearly 20 different crops growing on 60-some acres, and according to the harvest schedule in their brochure the following are coming ripe about now: cherries, black raspberries, red raspberries, purple raspberries. blueberries, blackberries and apricots. There's a Berry Festival scheduled June 22. Look for peaches about the first of July.
They also have a farm market where you can buy fruits and vegetables, jams and preserves, other Virginia farm products and recipes and cookbooks. If you're going to make a day of it, you can bring your own picnic and eat it overlooking the Rappahannock, or you can buy stuff to eat at a take-out window.
Getting there: About three miles south of Route 3 on Route 637. Open May through November, 8-6, except Sundays 10-6. Free. Info: (804) 224-9171.
Westmoreland State Park. One of the state's original six, established 60 years ago. Located between the birthplaces of Washington and Lee. It offers 1,300 wooded acres on cliffs overlooking the Potomac. There are rental cabins (some are rustic old log structures built by the CCC boys in the 1930s) and camping areas plus hiking trails, beaches, rental boats and fishing.
My favorite place is the walk along the shoreline between the wide river - that's Maryland over there through the haze - and what is called Horsehead Cliffs. About 12 million years ago this was the bottom of the Miocene Sea.
Between then and now the land rose high above the sea and rivers cut deeply into it. The Chesapeake Bay was formerly a great river valley through which the Susquehanna flowed (the Potomac was a tributary) and emptied into the Atlantic Ocean far to the east of our present shore.
Today the layers of sediment of this former sea are exposed in these towering cliffs. The layers include many fossils, shells, shark's teeth and whale bones. That's what people come looking for, although their removal by digging is prohibited except by permission from the state parks office.
It's not an easy walk - about a half-mile from the beach activities center through deep gravely sand, rip-rap rocks and fallen timber, undercut from the cliffs above - but it's worth the effort.
The most prominent layer of sediment, ranging from about five feet thick to 25-30 feet thick, is a dense but crumbly clay, ranging in color from battleship gray where it is wet to creamy white where it is dried by the breeze.
In places the gray is streaked rust red by rivulets that run through the iron oxide deposits on the bluffs above and slide down the slippery slope to disappear into the sandy beach.
I never saw any fossils or shark's teeth. Few people do. You'd spent your time more profitably collecting or photographing the grotesquely twisted and weathered driftwood and fallen trees.
Getting there: About two miles north of Route 3 on Route 347. Signposted. Admission $2. Info: (804) 493-8821.
Elsewhere in Westmoreland County are these points of interest:
Monroe's birthplace. The site of the fifth president's birthplace, Monrovia, has been swallowed up by the modern town of Colonial Beach. This land was first settled by James Monroe's great-great grandfather, Andrew, a Scot, in 1647. The next year he returned to Scotland and fought the British in the Battle of Preston. Captured, he was sentenced to banishment. Well, thank you very much. He returned to Virginia and in 1650 patented the tract where he had originally settled.
Leedstown. At the Rappahannock end of Route 638 (a few miles past Ingleside), there's nothing much here today except a campground. It was here in 1766 that a bunch of the guys from the county, along with some of the fellows from across the river, got together and adopted a resolution written by Richard Henry Lee, called the Leedstown Resolves, against the Stamp Act - the first written protest against the British tax.
Kinsale. This quaint maritime village, founded in 1706 on the Yeocomico River at the county's eastern end, is still considered one of the best deepwater ports in the lower Potomac. It was a busy commercial shipping hub until the early 20th century when steamboat traffic died. Kinsale Museum, in a restored 18th century pub, chronicles this period.
Coles Point. A modern Potomac riverside recreation area featuring fishing, boating and seafood eating. ILLUSTRATION: STEPHEN HARRIMAN COLOR PHOTOS
WESTMORELAND STATE PARK: Located between the birthplaces of
Washington and Lee, the park is set on cliffs overlooking the
Potomac.
STRATFORD HALL
The birthplace of Robert E. Lee remains a grandiloquent statement of
the affluence, taste and style of the plantation aristocracy.
INGLESIDE PLANTATION
Once a boys' school and a Civil War garrison, today this 1834
plantation is one of Virginia's largest wineries.
Photo
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Costumed docents re-create plantation life at Washington's
Birthplace in Westmoreland County. Our first president wasn't really
born here, but rather at a nearby site.
Map
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Where: Westmoreland County is located on the peninsula called the
Northern Neck, bounded on the north by the Potomac River and on the
south by the Rappahannock. It was named for the former Westmorland
(no second ``e'') in northwest England, now a part of Cumbria.
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads, take I-64 west, then
U.S. 17 north (scenic and lightly traveled beyond Gloucester) to
Tappahannock. Turn north on U.S. 360, and cross the Rappahannock to
Warsaw, then go west on Virginia 3. It's about a three-hour drive.
On the way: Try to arrange your trip so that you'll be passing
through Tappahannock at meal time. Or change your eating habits.
Stop at Lowery's, a popular family restaurant since 1938. You'll
thank me for this.
Staying there: There is not an abundance of overnight
accommodations in Westmoreland because it is not a heavily touristed
area. The popular old Inn at Montross is closed, but there is a
motel in this county seat village and several more in Colonial
Beach. I stayed at the Mt. Holly Steamboat Inn on Nomini Creek
northeast of Montross. This was a B&B long before such
accommodations became fashionable. That goes back to the days when
steamboats plied the waters of the Chesapeake between Norfolk and
Baltimore and Washington. Manfred and Margie Soeffing offer six
pleasant Victorian-style rooms (prices start at $65) and wonderful
dining. They're expanding the veranda for more outdoor dining
overlooking the water. Info: (804) 472-3336. For other dining
options, ask the locals for their favorites; this is the sort of
place where they're glad to tell you.
Info: Westmoreland County Visitor Center (a nice museum),
Courthouse Square, P.O. Box 996, Montross, Va. 22520; (804)
493-8440. Also, Northern Neck Travel Council (800) 453-6167.
- Stephen Harriman by CNB