Joe Tennis
Beyond all the debate over whether a solar farm should be located around Wyndale in Washington County, Virginia, a central theme emerged during a five-hour meeting of the Washington County Planning Commission on June 24 in Abingdon, Virginia.
And that means, “We love this place.”
Which was a really heartening consensus and spoke well of the true pride of the place.
It’s a great place to live, if you can make a living, a friend once told me.
That has certainly been true during the 30 years I have called Washington County home.
And it was clear that it was the same feeling for the farmers and homesteaders who raved about the picturesque hills, valleys, streams, roaming deer and beef cattle paradise that lay between Whitetop Mountain on the sunrise side and the flank of Clinch Mountain to the west.
People also read…
Speakers from Sandy Level, Virginia, and Jonesborough, Tennessee, came to talk about solar energy and what could happen if a large-scale solar farm was built.
Most people stopped to say, “You have a beautiful county here.”
No matter who you are, almost everyone can agree that Washington County is a beautiful place.
So, be proud of this 566 square mile slice of the old Dominion.
It includes three branches of the Holston River, two wildlife management areas, a state forest, a national forest, a national recreation area and 1,600 acres of South Holston Lake.
Washington County can also claim to be home to more miles of rail-to-trail projects than any other county in Virginia, including the Virginia Creeper Trail, the Mendota Trail and the Salt Trail.
People come on vacation. They come back again and again. And then they settle here.
And, since it’s the week of the Fourth of July, all the celebrations of 1776 shouldn’t be lost when remembering how Virginia’s largest county, southwest of Roanoke, got its start.
Washington separated from the now-defunct Fincastle County to form an area that once extended to what is now the Kentucky border and south to what is now Bristol, Tennessee.
It was named in honor of a great and courageous man named George Washington, then a general in the American Revolution, just a few years before he became the country’s first president.
Yes, of course, absolutely.
