Preserving, enhancing and celebrating the Blue Ridge Mountains

“…Washington set out on horseback on this surveying expedition in company with George William Fairfax. Their route lay by Ashby’s Gap, a pass through the Blue Ridge, that beautiful line of mountains which, as yet, almost formed the western frontier of inhabited Virginia. They entered the great valley of Virginia, where it is twenty-five miles wide, a temperate region admirably adapted to cultivation. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the North Mountain, a ridge of the Alleganies, on the other, while through it flows that river named by the Indians the Shenandoah - ‘daughter of the stars’ ”

Excerpt from The Life of George Washington by Washington Irving, 1859

The Importance of Stewarding Our Mountains

Half of humanity depends directly on mountains as a source of fresh water. Mountains also provide critical resources, recreation opportunities, and spiritual renewal. Our Blue Ridge Mountains represent all of these - the highest headwaters of the Potomac and other watersheds, and a vital source of recreation, resources, and renewal.

But mountains are exceptionally fragile: the rise in elevation creates many different climates, soils, and types of flora and fauna that make for highly diverse and complex ecosystems. And because mountain soils tend to be thin and poorly anchored by vegetation, mountain environments can be exceptionally sensitive to disturbances and slow to recover.

Devastated by logging in the 19th and 20th centuries, and by development in the 20th and 21st centuries, the Blue Ridge Mountains have been and continue to be at risk. Though some parts of the unique and fragile habitats of the Blue Ridge range have been protected through ordinances and the creation of national and state parks, the threat of wholesale development - in ways that would irrevocably diminish or destroy this treasure - is greater now than ever. The mountains are a splendid natural resource to be valued and a gift to the spirit to be stewarded with great care.