Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411210088
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Back Creek residents wanting to preserve the 250-year-old Poage farm are circulating petitions urging the highway department to leave the farmhouse alone if U.S. 221 is widened.
Poages have been working their land in Back Creek since 1748. The farm is one of only two dairy operations left in Roanoke County.
Patsy Williams, who has lived in Back Creek for nearly 10 years, started the petition drive and will collect signatures until Dec.15. She said she'd like to get at least 4,000 signatures to present to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The farm is an important part of Back Creek's identity, she said. She wants VDOT to find a way to widen U.S. 221 without taking the farmhouse.
"All we're asking is the roots of our community be preserved," Williams said. "That's the only sign of the way things used to be, or one of the few left."
She said that not only are people agreeing to sign the petitions, they're taking some to pass around. Three businesses also are displaying the petitions.
The Old Poage Farm is in one of the Roanoke Valley's fastest-growing areas. U.S. 221, also known as Bent Mountain Road, bisects the farm, with pasture on one side and the farmhouse, barn and some cropland on the other.
The winding, narrow two-lane road is dangerous and crowded, many residents maintain, and the state has begun plans to improve it. The 2.3-mile section to be improved will stop just past the farm.
VDOT has made no decisions on where a widened 221 would go - or even if the road will be widened, spokeswoman Laura Bullock said.
Petitions are noticed by VDOT, Bullock said. But she stressed that, despite the petition's wording, no decision has been made to take the Poages' farm.
"There are no plans to four-lane it," she said. "There are no plans at all."
Leaving the road as it is, which VDOT calls the "no-build option," is a possibility if residents don't want anything done. That seems unlikely, with general agreement that the road is unsafe and crowded. However, there are options available between doing nothing and building a four-lane highway through the farm.
Adding turn lanes and straightening curves are possibilities, if that's what residents say they want. VDOT formed a 14-member citizen advisory committee this month to get residents' opinions on the project. Members representing the interests of developers, farmers, civic leagues, people who want the no-build option, businesses and the Blue Ridge Parkway are among those on the committee.
William Poage, who was born in the 161-year-old farmhouse, runs the farm with his wife and youngest son. Poage, 65, isn't one to promote himself, and the attention makes him a little uncomfortable.
"I don't know. ... I guess it's all right," he said of the petition. "It keeps throwing us into the limelight, and I'm not much for that."
His son Bill Poage, who is Williams' veterinarian, said his family is encouraged by the support.
He has a petition with 250 signatures on it at his animal hospital.
"Everybody out there my father has done favors for at one time or another," he said, from fixing a flat tire to letting their kids watch the cows being milked.
The irony of subdivision dwellers - the very ones whose traffic may necessitate a four-lane road - pulling together to save a farm threatened by that road is not lost on the petition's organizer.
"I understand it's a Catch-22," said Williams, who lives in Carriage Hills, one of the subdivisions along Bent Mountain Road.
She'd like to see both the road improvements and the Poage farm coexist.
"I think something definitely needs to be done about the road. It's not safe," she said. "But I do not believe in progress at any cost."
Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, who represents much of the Back Creek area, said he thinks there is a way to have a widened road and protect the Poages.
VDOT has suggested widening the road on the existing path on the north side of Back Creek or building a new road on the south side, where there's more room for a four-lane highway. If the road is widened to four lanes and a median added on the existing roadbed, it would have to take the Poages' farmhouse.
Griffith said he tentatively supports a third route, one the Poages suggested.
He wants to see what the cost is before committing himself, but Griffith said he likes the Poages' idea of building the road on the ridge behind the farm. The road would stay on the north side of the creek, but would not run alongside it.
"It may be a good compromise route, and it may save money," he said.
It also would relieve landowners on the south side of the creek, including developer Steve Strauss, who has a 147-lot subdivision in the works there.
VDOT engineer Jeff Echols said the ridge route Griffith likes is one of many VDOT will look at before presenting a list of "three or so" options at a public location hearing next spring.
VDOT mailed 900 newsletters to property owners and commuters who attended a June community meeting on the road project. Others can be added to the mailing list by calling Bullock at VDOT's Salem District Office.
"The consensus, in my opinion based on that meeting, is that something needs to be done," Bullock said. "Now we have to find what everyone can live with."
by CNB