Down Memory Lane
Sept. 1, 1966
Rappahannock’s generally quiet Harris Hollow echoed with shouts of glee and vibrated with music Saturday as 47 handicapped youngsters of the Metropolitan area frolicked on the hillsides at an all-day outing sponsored by the Downtown Jaycee Chapter of Washington, D.C. Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Miko of Glen Eyrie Farm Inn and Mrs.
Marietta Cheatham of Mountain Green opened their homes and were co-hosts for the group of boys and girls, ages 7 through 16, all of whom were blind.
In the afternoon the children toured the farm, hearing and feeling the farm animals, including pigs, chickens, cows, dogs and horses, which had been penned for the occasion.
Eighteen pieces of farm machinery lined up in the front meadow were examined by the youngsters, and all had rides on horses or ponies, under the skillful handling of farm foreman Billy Smoot and his assistants. Mr. Smoot and the farm personnel, Herbert, Bobby and Thomas Fincham, Charles Wayne, Ronny and Jerry Smoot, plus mascot Craig Smoot, all wore festive “Farmer Jones” overalls, red kerchiefs and straw hats. They helped with the rides and explained the general operation of the farm and orchards to the group. Some of the children, with the aid of special equipment, played baseball, and all had been given beach balls and straw hats by the Jaycees.
A Rappahannock foxhound took first place in High General Average Derby Hounds at the field trials of the Northern Virginia Fox Hunters Association held Aug. 25-27. The trials were held at The Hill and Longlea, Culpeper. The hound was Intervale Mongo, bred and owned by
W. H. Lyne, Washington.
Lyne is doubly proud since the sire and dam of Mongo went through the trials without a fault. The sire, Intervale Klang, a six year hound, scored in trailing while Intervale slip, scored for hunting, placed 10th in speed and drive in the field and placed 5th in All Age Females on the bench.
March 9, 1978
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and if signatures on petitions mean anything, a lot of beholders have found the recently erected motel sign on Route 211 just outside Washington decidedly “unbeautiful.”
Petitions circulating around the town now carry approximately 60 signatures in opposition to the new sign advertising the Lake Motel.
Petitioners are asking that the motel and its owners not be granted a special use permit for the sign “because it is in conflict with the predominant character of the neighborhood . . . . We feel that every business should have the right to advertise by means of a sign (but) said sign should be tasteful and in keeping with the community.”
In a general business commercial zone, the zoning ordinance allows signs advertising local businesses as a use permitted by right. The ordinance also stipulates that all structures except signs advertising sale or rent of property shall be located 55 feet or more from the right of way of any highway or street having a right of way greater than 50 feet.
The Rappahannock Ski Corporation has decided to fight to reopen the twice-bankrupt ski area in Harris Hollow as an all-year recreation center revolving around a snowless Alpine slide.
On Tuesday, attorney Douglas
Baumgardner filed a petition in circuit court asking for a reversal of the Rappahannock Board of Zoning Appeals denial of the ski area’s special use permit application. The petition filed March 7 also seeks “costs and reasonable counsel fees.”
Following two long and heavily attended public hearings, BZA members voted unanimously on Feb. 9 to turn down the Rappahannock Ski Corporation’s request for a permit to operate 300 acres as a commercial ski area.