History at Stake Near Poplar Forest
By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot

FOREST — Thomas Jefferson called the 72 acres at the edge of his beloved Poplar Forest retreat here, just outside of Lynchburg, the “Lower Field.”

His slaves grew tobacco, wheat and corn on the green plot of rolling hills. A good walk away, beyond groves of oak and cedar and across a thin stream, an aging Jefferson would relax, read and write in his mathematically planned, octagonal-shaped mansion facing the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Now a national historical site, the Poplar Forest estate was an intentionally quiet place the former president and great American thinker designed as his retirement villa. It was his second home, 90 miles from Monticello and far from the rigors of public life, where Jefferson could enjoy “the solitude of a hermit,” as he once described in a letter to a friend.

Several years ago, the city of Lynchburg acquired the Lower Field and offered it for sale, triggering another debate in history-rich Virginia of preserving the past or building for the future.

The tract was controlled by the city’s industrial development authority and zoned for industrial uses. Not only was the land close to Poplar Forest, it also was in the shadow of a trendy planned-community project called Wyndhurst.

There, handsome apartments and town houses have been built over the past two years amid red-brick coffee shops, restaurants, offices and a retirement village. Together, they form a new town center for outlying Lynchburg, west of an old and struggling downtown.

Developers quickly bid on the prime parcel on Enterprise Drive. The top candidate wanted to construct a shopping center there.

Also in the running was the Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, a historical preservation group. Four concerned citizens formed the group in 1983, and they purchased the decaying octagonal home and adjacent property a month later before they could be sold for development.

This time, with more at stake, Lynchburg officials decided to side with history – but also with an eye toward economic gain. They reasoned that Poplar Forest might someday become a money-making engine for tourism, given the proper size and attention.

So last month, after nearly a year of negotiations and debate, the Jefferson group took title to the Lower Field through a $3 million bank loan.

“The threat of impending development makes the purchase of Jefferson’s Lower Field a now-or-never decision,” said Judith Schulz , chairwoman of the Poplar Forest board of directors. “How much of Jefferson’s retreat survives for future generations to experience depends on the decisions that our generation makes now.”

The acquisition is important because the group does not want Poplar Forest to “just be a house museum,” said Lynn A. Beebe, president of the nonprofit corporation. Instead, the group seeks to “rescue” hundreds of acres that Jefferson and subsequent owners sold the past two centuries, then create a national tourism attraction, not unlike Monticello, with trails and education centers and school bus lots.

As envisioned, visitors could roam the grounds and “get the same retreat-like pleasures that Jefferson got here,” Beebe said.

The Lower Field purchase involves the most money the group has ever spent, as it slowly pieces the old plantation together again. Poplar Forest once sprawled across 4,000 acres , which today is in the middle of a high-growth area of suburban Lynchburg and eastern Bedford County .

Driving to the historic estate, one passes a new school, new roads and new shopping outlets, all dug from the rich red soil of the area, many named for the area’s historic roots – Jefferson Elementary School, Poplar Forest Nursery, Plantation Drive.

Beebe said her group has no intention of completely buying back the original estate – “ It’s not necessary,” she said – stressing that the Lower Field probably is the last big land purchase to be pursued.

The corporation now controls more than 600 acres , Beebe said, including a nine-hole golf course built below Jefferson’s home in the 1970s , a community pool and tennis center, and several houses also built in the ’70s, set remarkably close to the octagonal landmark.

Bedford County had no zoning regulations back then; they were adopted in 1989 . Only now is the county incorporating historic-site protections into its local planning rules, said Philip Thompson , Bedford County’s planning director.

Thompson said that if subdivisions were proposed today in the same proximity to Jefferson’s mansion as those in the late ’70s, “sadly, they’d probably be approved.”

The Jefferson group, of course, must repay its $3 million loan for the Lower Field. It just launched a national fund-raising drive to do so.

A Georgia-based organization, the Watson-Brown Foundation , has offered the largest gift so far, a $500,000 challenge grant. When the corporation reaches the $1.9 million mark , Watson-Brown will release its donation.

“We felt both obligated and delighted to help rescue that which was dear to Jefferson,” said Tad Brown, Watson-Brown’s president. 

Jefferson inherited Poplar Forest in 1773 through his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton , whom he married the year before. He rarely visited the property then, except for one famous diversion, in 1781 , when Jefferson and his family took refuge there to escape British troops seeking his capture in nearby Charlottesville.

While hiding out in an overseer’s house, he drafted sections of his celebrated book, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” published in 1787 .

For many years afterward, Jefferson seemed intentionally vague and secretive about Poplar Forest, referring to it only briefly in letters as “my distant plantation.”

To Beebe, it was all about privacy.

“This was where this very important man would escape to, to relax and spend quality time with his family and grandchildren,” she said. “Now, would you want to tell everyone about a place like that? Absolutely not!”

During his second term as president, in 1806 , Jefferson began designing and constructing his retirement home. He was 63 . “I am preparing an occasional retreat in Bedford where I expect to settle some of my grandchildren,” he wrote to a friend that year.

He slept at his new mansion for the first time in 1809 . Records suggest that he began staying there for increasingly longer spells, up to two months at a time, as he grew older and less able to make the three-day carriage ride from Monticello. (Today, by car, the trek takes about 90 minutes.)

Jefferson turned over the estate to his grandson, Francis Eppes , in 1823 . Three years later , Jefferson died. Eppes and his bride did not enjoy the solitude or the tobacco farming, so they sold the house and 1,043 acres two years later. A neighbor bought it for $5,000 .

The house nearly burned to the ground in 1845 from a chimney fire. It then went through a series of remodelings and owners, slowly falling into disrepair, the estate slowing shrinking in size as more and more land was sold for development.

Then in December 1983 the Poplar Forest conservation group sprang up, in response to an editorial in the Lynchburg newspaper. A month later, the group bought the home and an adjacent 49 acres for $900,000 , not sure how to pay off a bank loan backing the deal.

Members started spreading the word, and money soon came rolling in. Local schools collected nickels from their students; historical societies sent checks. The corporation converted old workers’ homes on the estate to offices, a barn into an archaeology lab.

With the help of expert carpenters, the mansion is being restored to its original design and with original materials – from a lime-based mortar that holds bricks together, to window sashes made from hemp grown in Holland.

On a recent morning, Vincent Fastabend director of architectural restoration, was busy rebuilding a four-room wing of the mansion. Jefferson kept his kitchen and smokehouse in the wing, but a subsequent owner tore down the structure.

Fastabend and his team work slowly, notching wood beams and shoving them together by hand. Visitors are encouraged to watch the restoration and ask questions of the carpenters, or anyone else on the grounds, for that matter.

Because of this personalized approach, the New York Times, in a 1999 article, called Poplar Forest a “fascinating museum-in-progress.”

There still are mysteries to be solved. Such as: Where are the stables? (Jefferson was an avid horseman.) Where’s the nursery? (He also loved to tinker with horticulture.) And where exactly are the slave quarters? (Up to 94 black slaves lived on the estate.)

Jefferson’s supposed slave-intimate, Sally Hemings , did not stay at Poplar Forest. But her brother, John, was chief carpenter for the estate. He brought two of Sally’s sons to serve as assistants, too, according to historical documents.

Barbara Heath , director of archaeology and landscaping, has found tens of thousands of artifacts on the grounds, from shards of fine English china to clay pipes used by the slaves.

She has conducted a few quick surveys of the Lower Field, but has found little.

Heath and others believe the Lower Field was used mostly to grow tobacco. The gold leaves then would be carted to a nearby “prize barn,” where slaves would bale and store them, before shipping them to Lynchburg or Richmond.

Heath only discovered remnants of the barn a few years ago. But the find led to a purchase of land around the barn in 2001 , and spurred the group to look into preserving the Lower Field as well.

The city of Lynchburg was tempted to sell the land for commercial development. The tract would have fit nicely into the Wyndhurst project, already gaining acclaim for its theme of growing smartly, without sprawl, by packing residential, commercial and recreational facilities close together.

There was talk of putting movie theaters there, maybe a big grocery store.

“Then, I think, there was this realization that we had a real opportunity here,” said Kimball Payne, the city manager, “to put something there that preserved Poplar Forest and helped the economy.”

The city negotiated a deal with the Jefferson group that included two key elements, Payne said – the land will remain on Lynchburg’s property-tax rolls, and “appropriate development” remains an option.

That could include the construction of an old-style tavern, restaurant or inn that could draw tourists there – “sort of like how Monticello has been built out,” Payne said.

Strolling through the Lower Field recently, Beebe pointed to invisible spots on the horizon and talked of the future.

“This gives us a new entrance, which we really, really need,” she said. “We could bring the kids in here in their buses, then lead them this way ” on a small road that would rise gently up the amber hills and toward the mansion.

It’s the same route that Jefferson’s slaves, after a long day of cultivating tobacco, probably took on their way back home. To small sheds that, to this day, lay undiscovered somewhere beneath the rich, red soil ahead.