Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 27, 1991 TAG: 9102270267
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Hoge just wants the land left the way it is - 32 acres of stubbly field, full of rocks and overworked soil from years of cattle grazing.
Unremarkable, except that it's undeveloped property - an endangered specimen now surrounded by residential growth.
But under a conservation easement between Hoge and the town, "the hill," as it's known, will never fall victim to the bulldozer.
"The next generation isn't going to know what open space looks like," said the 87-year-old widow. "There are things more important to me than money."
A proposal last summer to extend Patrick Henry Drive to South Main Street at Airport Road would have sliced right through Hoge's property, which lies next to the town's golf course.
"And I said, `Poor Patrick Henry.' Give me liberty or give me death - he would have turned over in his grave," she said during an interview in her Hemlock Drive home Tuesday.
At a public information meeting on the road project, she questioned Councilman Michael Chandler, who said she could save her farm, forever, with an open-space easement.
"I thought that was a marvelous thing," she said.
The agreement, which likely will be signed this week, grants Blacksburg the right to keep the hill an undeveloped knob of land, where cattle still graze in view of many town residents.
Hoge will still own the property, but the open-space easement will stay with the property so no one can develop it - not Hoge, her heirs or any other subsequent owners.
The easement also states that the land cannot be subdivided, built upon, paved over for roads or turned into a park.
"Practically, the chances of any condemnation on that land are almost nil," said Town Attorney Richard Kaufman. The land could conceivably be just a grassy, empty hill hundreds of years from now, he said.
Kaufman and Hoge's lawyer, Doug Brinckman of Christiansburg, worked out the details of the easement over the last several months using a model from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.
"Kate Hoge's action is a magnanimous gesture," Chandler said. "It will cause future residents of Blacksburg . . . to say, `How can that space remain open?' And they won't even know her."
Hoge came to Blacksburg in 1927 newly married to John Hampton Hoge Jr., who operated a family-owned coal mine in Montgomery County.
Back then, their home was in the county, and Preston Avenue was still a dirt road.
"Now I'm in the same house and I'm practically downtown," she said. "That's how much things have changed."
The Hoges eventually acquired more than 200 acres of land where they grew apples and grazed about 40 head of cattle. They bought "the hill" in 1948 as part of a larger farm owned by the Palmers.
Hoge said that since her husband died in 1957, people have badgered her to sell her property.
"My husband wasn't cold in his grave but they wanted to buy the property and put up all these apartments."
But she wouldn't let it go, despite her husband's deathbed wish that she sell the farm and travel in England and Scotland, as she'd always longed to do.
She said the pressure to sell finally dwindled when word got around that "`It's no use calling Mrs. Hoge. She ain't going to sell any of it.' And here I am still, with the farm."
by CNB