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By BONNIE PRICE LOFTON
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Do you own a chunk of paradise in Rappahannock County?
If so, do you hunger to keep it the way it is forever? Do you long to do something to make sure that nobody, ever, could carve it up into a housing development, or put a highway through it, or stick a shopping center on it, or strip it of its trees?
If you’re thinking “that’s me,” this is the article for you, even if you own fewer than 50 acres.
Someone with a small parcel may be thinking: “My land can’t be subdivided anyway because of the county’s zoning law that requires 25 acres per house outside of the villages.”
But zoning laws can be changed.
A “conservation easement” cannot be.
This is one reason why so many large and small landowners in Rappahannock are quietly shifting their land into easement status. (Some people call it “open space easement”; we’ll call it simply “easement.”)
Under easement, you still own your land, but you donate most development rights to a charitable organization, such as the Virginia Outdoor Foundation. In other words, you voluntarily restrict your right (and the right of future owners) to develop your land in return for some tax breaks and for the satisfaction of knowing that you’re creating a little comer in this world that nobody can ruin.
Bob and Helen Bridges have put 277 acres of their land between Washington and Sperryville into easement, including their end of Jenkins Mountain, their pastures and ponds, and their frontage on both sides of the Covington River.
“Wouldn’t it be horrible to see this subdivided, . to see 20 or 30 houses?” Mr. Bridges said, gesturing towards the spectacular view from “Eagle’s Nest,” their mountaintop home, which also serves as a bed and breakfast.
“It’s heaven. That’s what it is... We’re only caretakers of this land. If you don’t do something to protect it while you’re alive, you don’t know what might happen to it in the future,” he said.
The Bridges have four daughters and 11 grandchildren, whom they say understand why the land they will inherit has
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