Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 13, 1990 TAG: 9007130055
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Beginning in the 1930s and '40s, the federal government acquired the 700,000 acres of mountainous land a patch at a time, and not necessarily according to topographical features.
A map of the forest today looks like a snowflake cut out of paper by a child - jagged edges and dozens of irregular white shapes, holdings of private land, surrounded by the green of the public forest.
The Blacksburg Ranger District is actually spread out in four large pieces, and several small islands of public forest land.
Managing such oddly shaped property, and maintaining all the boundary markers, is no easy task. And it's costly.
But the Forest Service can't sell property, and has limited money to buy land. Instead, the agency swaps land with private owners based on property value.
Tom Speaks Jr., a Forest Service land staff specialist, said that roughly 500 acres a year are traded in the Jefferson between the government and private owners.
The agency is involved in a three-way deal with Preston Forest Associates and two Unionville women to swap 168 acres in Montgomery County for 418 acres in Giles County.
This is how it works: Preston Forest Associates, which developed the secluded Montgomery County subdivision of Preston Forest, has contracted to buy the women's property on Butt Mountain near the Cascades.
The developer will deed that 418-acre parcel to the Forest Service, which in turn will give Preston Forest Associates the 168-acre strip next to its subdivision off Brush Mountain.
"I wouldn't say it's useless," District Ranger Dave Collins said of the "finger" of forest land one mile long and a quarter-mile wide. "But the cost of managment would far exceed the benefits" of maintaining it, he said.
The Forest Service assessed both pieces of property at $150,000, Speaks said, so the swap between the agency and the developer will involve no money at all.
Also, as required by law, the Forest Service conducted an environmental study of the forest land before agreeing to the swap.
The study included identifying any threatened or endangered species, wetlands, archaeological sites and valuable mineral deposits.
"They found nothing of any problem there," Speaks said. The Forest Service has been trying to acquire the Giles County tract for many years because of its significant natural features. The headwaters of a natural trout stream are found there and the 4,000-foot-high site is one of the few examples of northern hardwood Appalachian forest in the Blacksburg district, Speaks said.
Randy Gardner, developer and marketing agent for Preston Forest Associates, said completing all the paperwork will likely take nine months to a year.
Once done, the company plans to apply for rezoning from conservation to residential and expand Preston Forest subdivision.
"With large parcels, not the little teeny-weeny tracts. People like openness and wooded areas," he said. Of 172 tracts in the current development, all but 31 have been sold since 1975, he said.
And the Forest Service, for its part, will get rid of a bothersome piece of land and acquire a choice site for the forest. "We look at this [swap] as a great opportunity," Speaks said.
by CNB