Down Memory Lane

From Back Issues of the Rapp News

April 19, 1984 LOCAL CITIZENS HAVE SOUGHT SPECIAL USE PERMITS

Washington could become a bigger tourist center if work is completed on several projects for which local citizens have sought special use permits.

At the regular April Town Council meeting, o cials received three applications from Peter Kramer and one each from D. Patrick Foster

and Camille A. Harris.

Kramer has applied for a special use permit to operate a guest house for short-term occupancy on Gay Street. The establishment would include a maximum of ve units, including a manager’s apartment.

The building in question is locally known as “the old Snead apartments,” according to Mayor Newbill Miller.

Kramer plans to rent the rooms as a bed and breakfast inn. As there would be ve bedrooms, Kramer said he would put in ve parking spots. The actual use of the property would probably decrease, he added, since he expects to rent the rooms primarily during the weekends.

NEW RAPPAHANNOCK OFFICERS COMPLETED TRAINING

Rappahannock’s new corrections o cers, Charles M. Hitt, William Jenkins and Terry Fritts, have completed training at the Central Shenandoah Criminal Justice Academy in Waynesboro as Sheri John Henry Woodward prepares to open the county’s recently remodeled lock-up as a full-time jail.

New dispatchers, meanwhile, are Connie Hu of Flint Hill, a graduate of RCHS and a former employee at the Aileen Plant; Teddie Hannon of Castleton, a nurse and member of the Castleton Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad; and Sheila Scott, 1982 honor graduate of RCHS and a member of the Amissville Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad.

May 23, 2001 SPERRYVILLE GETS A BRIDGE

At a meeting of the Sperryville Gateway Committee last week, committee members approved a resolution recommending that the Board of Supervisors “approve and authorize the Pedestrian Bridge and Gateway Sidewalk Improvements Construction Project for final engineering, bidding, and construction.”

Frank Cox of The Cox Company of Charlottesville, the project’s engineering and design consultant, presented the nal plans for the steel and wooden-decked pedestrian bridge and for the related aspects of this rst and long-awaited phase of the Gateway Project. Preliminary pedestrian bridge plans and options were presented to the Committee last September, and the approval of these nal plans means that fabrication could start within the next few months, and work on site could conceivably be apparent by this coming September.

This phase of the project has been estimated to cost $63,500 of the $220,000 project budget, and it includes the bridge, bridge abutments and foundations, bridge installation, landscaping, and a pedestrian walkway from the bridge’s south side at Water Street, across the southern end of the highway bridge on Route 522, and south along the west side of the road to Lester Deal’s building.

NEW HISTORIC MARKER RECALLS UNION OCCUPATION OF COUNTY

A new Virginia historic marker, a black-and-silver cast-metal sign, now stands at the edge of Route 522 in a grassy lot adjacent to the Reynolds Memorial Baptist Church, which graciously agreed to provide a place for the marker in its historically appropriate site.

General Franz Sigel, in 1862, took over the home “Oak Hill” that stood atop the slope overlooking the new marker.

The new historic marker is headlined “Pope’s Army of Virginia,” referring to the Union Army organized in 1862 under Major General John Pope. It explains that Pope’s command brought together the three corps commanded by Generals Sigel, Nathaniel P. Banks

and Irvin McDowell.

General Pope selected Rappahannock County to organize and drill this new army before heading into the campaign of Second Manassas, which ended in a severe defeat for the Union army and the removal of General Pope from command.

Sperryville was literally surrounded and engulfed by Pope’s blue clad soldiers, who brought their hundreds of wagons, cannons, horses, tents and equipment to the county.