Fluvanna County Historical Society asks residents to help document threatened sites

By Heather Michon, Editor

Since it was announced earlier this year, the proposed Valley Link transmission line has been described in terms of megawatts, substations and rights-of-way. It is an entirely future-facing project, designed to provide power to modern homes and data centers clustered in Northern Virginia.

But for local preservationists, the project is also about something harder to measure: the quiet historic landscape of Central Virginia.

Earlier this month, Preservation Virginia named the nine-county corridor targeted by the proposed 765-kilovolt Valley Link transmission project to its 2026 list of Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places.

The proposed 115-mile Joshua Falls-to-Yeat segment would begin near Lynchburg and run northeast through the Virginia Piedmont toward a proposed substation in Culpeper County.

If approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission, the line would require a cleared right-of-way roughly 200 feet wide through largely rural areas, with towers and wires crossing forests, farms, waterways and open land.

Historic Vision Threatened

For Fluvanna County Historical Society President Kathleen Kilpatrick, the scale of the project poses a threat not only to individual historic sites, but to the broader fabric of the county.

“The people of Fluvanna have spoken and acted time and time again to preserve our rural character and the diversity of special places throughout the county,” Kilpatrick said in the Preservation Virginia announcement. “Never before has the work and vision of generations of Fluvannians been threatened as today.”

Kilpatrick said Fluvanna is being asked to bear roughly 31 miles of the proposed 115-mile line. She said the project could affect “every aspect of the historic and cultural identity” residents have worked to preserve, from descendant communities and working farms to landmarks that tell the county’s story.

That concern is shared across the corridor. The nomination identified a long list of historic districts, battlefields, scenic rivers and rural landscapes that could be directly or indirectly affected by the project.

Among them are the Bremo Historic District, the Fluvanna County Courthouse Historic District, the Green Springs Rural Historic District, Trevilian Station Battlefield, Mine Run Battlefield, the Rivanna Canal Navigation Historic District and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area.

Some of the potential impacts would come from direct crossings. Others would come from changes to the viewshed — the visual landscape surrounding a historic site.

Preservationists argue that a battlefield, courthouse village or rural historic district cannot be fully understood if its setting is dominated by industrial-scale towers and cleared utility corridors.

Documenting Historic Fluvanna

The Fluvanna County Historical Society is now asking residents to help document what may be at risk.

Archivists from the society will hold two public availability sessions at the Fluvanna County Public Library: Thursday, June 11, from 1 to 3 p.m., and Wednesday, June 17, from 6 to 8 p.m. Residents whose land may be connected to Fluvanna’s history are encouraged to stop by and share the details of their historic properties.

“We need to get the community to help document culturally and historically important sites,” said archivist Carolyn Talley. “We need to have the public’s input.”

At these sessions, FCHS volunteers can help residents fill out a short questionnaire to identify historic properties and features of all types.

These may include houses, commercial buildings, farms, family cemeteries, old roadbeds, mills, churches, schools, archaeological sites or other places with local significance.

Not every historic resource is listed on a state or national register. Many are known through family memory, old deeds, oral history or local tradition. That makes community participation essential, Talley said.

Once collected, the information may be submitted to Valley Link or state officials as part of the effort to protect the county’s historic landscapes.

It may also help the historical society update the 1993 Architectural Survey of Fluvanna County, which documented roughly 200 structures and sites, ranging from early settlement properties and antebellum estates to industrial features.

Historical society members say there is far more to document.

Linda Gore, corresponding secretary for the society, said she was recently traveling along Bremo Bluff Road when she noticed a half-dozen house sites dating to the 18th century.

“I was amazed to see so many in such a small area,” she said.

That density is part of what preservationists say makes the Valley Link corridor so sensitive. In Fluvanna and surrounding counties, history is not confined to a single museum, courthouse or battlefield. It is layered across the landscape, down old farm lanes, in family burial grounds, and in old churchyards.

Valley Link Transmission is a joint venture involving Dominion Energy, Transource and FirstEnergy Transmission. The companies have said the project is intended to improve regional electric reliability and move power through the grid as demand grows, particularly in Northern Virginia.

Preservation groups argue that demand should not come at the cost of permanently altering some of Virginia’s most historically significant rural landscapes. They are also concerned that the project may not receive the level of federal review they believe is warranted, despite the number of cultural, environmental and scenic resources along the possible routes.

The project is expected to come before the Virginia State Corporation Commission later this year. Preservation advocates are urging residents to review the proposed routes, submit comments to Valley Link and prepare to comment again when the SCC process begins.

For the Fluvanna County Historical Society, the immediate task is simpler and more local: identify what is here before decisions are made elsewhere.

In a county preparing to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence, Kilpatrick said the stakes feel especially high.

The fight over Valley Link, she said, is not only about where a transmission line should go. It is about whether rural communities will have a meaningful chance to protect the places that carry their memory.

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Valley Link puts historic landscape at risk