The Shadow
The year was 1993. Westvaco Corporation was wrapping up a $400 million expansion to the Covington paper mill, and Virginia Department of Transportation officials were considering how best to deal with the expected traffic surge, especially along heavily used Alleghany Avenue. In May, the Virginian Review reported that by December as many as 40,000 trucks per month would be rumbling through the City of Covington – an average of nearly one truck per minute.
VDOT made initial plans to add an I-64 exit at Callaghan, west of Covington, to allow trucks to access the mill via a new route that would cut through the mountainside near Boys’ Home. By September, the department had completed a traffic study and identified three alternative bypass locations, each of which would significantly affect neighborhoods in or near Covington.
Rose Dale, Inc. president Lydia McAllister Mefford wrote to the Virginian Review in September:
The three possible routes which may be chosen soon are the old ‘Old’ Blue Line Route which goes down Route 60 into town, destroying Westwood, Oakwood Forest, and Rosedale; the Orange Line, which destroys historical Rose Dale and also Westwood’s Oakwood Forest’s, and Rosedale’s access into town; and the Yellow Line, which destroys Wrightstown, Altamont, Fairlawn, and Alleghany Avenue forever.
Mefford’s group had proposed an alternative connection to the mill near Dunlop’s Creek that avoided the residential areas near Covington, a suggestion VDOT would eventually reject on the grounds that the bypass could not serve a single corporate customer. However, Rosedale’s residents were not planning to rely solely on the benevolence of the highway bureaucracy.
In October 1995, Lydia Mefford announced a proposal to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to name Rosedale as a Historic District. She noted that Rosedale was “…Covington’s first suburb, built primarily within a 30-year period with homes of distinctive style” and “a desirable neighborhood of strong architectural integrity.” She thanked Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hammond and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Lacy III for preparing the report, and the Rosedale and Alleghany historical societies and other local groups for lending their support. Leading the list of preservation-worthy buildings was the area’s namesake, Rose Dale, built in the late 1850s by Thompson McAllister. His son A. Addams McAllister had established the Rosedale neighborhood starting around 1900, while also selling off the rest of the old plantation to the West Virginia Pulp & Paper Company (later Westvaco) to build its new industrial complex.
In December, the Virginian Review reported that the Covington City Council had voted unanimously to ask the Virginia Board of Historic Resources to postpone Rosedale’s application. The Council was concerned that its real purpose was to block the proposed truck corridor, which Covington supported. This concern, of course, was entirely valid. The Council expressed the hope that a Rosedale Historic District could be created without interfering with the new bypass.
Covington’s objections notwithstanding, the state’s historic resources boards approved the proposal and forwarded it to the Virginia and National Historic Registers for review. Details of the actions and correspondence among the various parties that followed are preserved in the Charles Hammond collection at the offices of the Alleghany Historical Society in Covington.
VDOT’s next move was to hire an outside transportation engineering firm to survey the proposed route and publish a report, which the department also edited. Based on this report, VDOT contacted the Virginia Department of Historic Resources directly in late 1997 to object to the proposed boundaries of both the Rosedale Historic District and the adjacent Luke’s Mountain Historic District, arguing that the eastern Rosedale boundary “…is excessive and constitutes a buffer rather than contributing to any established areas of significance.” Landmark Preservation Associates countered on behalf of Rosedale, providing a detailed rebuttal of VDOT’s claims.
The Virginia Landmarks Register approved Rosedale’s application in December 1997. However, faced with VDOT’s powerful opposition, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources opted to forward the nomination to the National Park Service for a “substantive review” rather than approving it directly. VDOT immediately weighed in with its objections, while assuring the Park Service that the department was “…concerned solely that decisions about National Register issues are justified on historical facts and based on published National Register guidance.”
In March, the National Park Service sent the Rosedale nomination back after making a few minor revisions. Approval by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources soon followed. The district’s final configuration included 76 contributing buildings, nearly all dating to the 1930s or earlier and representing a variety of architectural styles, including Greek Revival, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Spanish Revival, Bungalow/Craftsman, and Modernistic.
In April, in response to a request for information from Lydia Mefford, VDOT admitted that the Rosedale situation had been the first time the department had participated in the review of a National Register nomination. VDOT stated that it would consider doing so again “to ensure our opinions are taken into account if similar circumstances are encountered in the future.”
At last, in June 1998, the defenders of Rosedale received official notification that the Rosedale Historic District had been added to the National Register of Historic Places. No new bypass would be bulldozed through the Rosedale, Oakwood Forest, and Westwood neighborhoods.
More than twenty-five years have gone by. Some of the people who participated in the battle have passed on. Mill trucks still rumble steadily down Alleghany Avenue and the Midland Trail.
Rosedale remains.
