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Visitor Center
The best place to put the official Rappahannock'
County Visitor Center? The Board of Supervisors
this week turned the issue over to the Tourism Partnership, an ad hoc group of tourist-business representatives and subject-matter experts, for its study and recommendations. Many of those experts showed up for the meeting Monday when the board considered designating a visitor center at The Link in Sperryville as “the” county visitor center. ^
While the board’s action seems a sound idea - let those most familiar with visitors’ needs and desires make an informed choice - another question keeps nagging:
In all the years since tourism joined agriculture as the county’s biggest cash crop, why is the closest place to find the best selection of brochures and advice about great things to do and see in Rappahannock County still found in ... Warren County? At the Front Royal Visitor Center?
We exaggerate, perhaps, but Front Royal has spent, and continues to spend, a not insignificant amount to keep the center a robust and necessary stop on many itineraries. It has one full-time paid coordinator and several part-time paid staff members.
Creative thinking, cooperation and some more-thanable grantwriting brought Rappahannock its own tourism office only a year ago. We hope more of the same will soon bring about a visitor center that lives up to the eminently visitable countryside that will surround it.
In the meantime, however, is there any reason that Sperryville’s Link - and the county library and Rappahannock Historical Society in Washington, other examples that come immediately to mind - could not be allowed to pick up the slack (or lack, in this case) and make room for what amounts to “mini” visitor centers? They are doing this in some capacity now anyway.
Smooth transition
Our two new supervisors-elect — Mike Biniek and
Chris Parrish — soon will be sworn in to the
county Board of Supervisors. While we congratulate them on winning we also wish to thank outgoing Piedmont supervisor Eddie Wayland for his service and chairman Bob Anderson of Stonewall-Hawthome for his more than two decades of dedication to the county.
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