This was a fight against bulldozers and New York investors, who sought to flip the 964 wooded clifftop acres high above the Rappahannock River into a major golf resort and housing development. But those bulldozers prematurely began work. That led to mudslides into the river below and state fines. The New Yorkers put the land up for auction in 2022. And, that’s where this story begins.
"It was a really nerve-wracking auction. I'm glad I wasn't the one doing the bidding," Heather Richards remembers with a laugh.
Richards is with The Conservation Fund, which buys at-risk lands to preserve and protect. They bid for the former tribal lands that are the largest acreage and highest part of Fones Cliffs.
"It was us and another bidder, and we knew we had a certain number that we could go to. If we were gonna get close to that, we were gonna call a timeout in the auction and try to regroup on can we actually go a little bit higher or not? And we got right up to that number before the other party stopped bidding. So, we were able to win the bankruptcy auction and it was both a moment of relief that 'I can't believe we just did that.' But also a moment of 'oh my God, now we have to actually do it and get it into the hands of the Tribe.'"
They paid $8.1 million and held it for the Tribe to buy. For the next three years a large list of donors and other funding partners stepped up to help the Tribe buy the land.
On this day, not far from the cliffs, Chief Anne Richardson brought some of them together on a boat tour of pristine marshes and ancestral lands on Menokin Bay and thanked them.
"Today is a gathering of all of the friends and partners who our God has brought together to restore this magnificent place to our people," Richardson told them. "So it can be protected and preserved for future generations.
And that includes neighboring property owners on the cliffs who also have roots here.
"The amazing thing is that these neighbors are people who grew up on that place, that are non-native, are coming forward in partnership with the Tribe to say, 'I grew up there and I knew that place was so special and I want to take you to this place and I want to take you to that place.'"
"They’re descendants of those early colonists," Richardson notes. "I just feel spiritually like we've come full circle to this place. Not just the Tribe but those families as well and rejoining to protect this beautiful place. And I know that those relationships in colonial times weren’t always adversarial. I know that we worked together at times and had relationships with those families. And so this is really just a restoration of what was."
The Tribe will care for the property alongside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The two already co-steward other properties along the cliffs. Marcie Kapsch manages the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge and will work with the Tribe.
"And so when all is sort of said and done, we're going to be co-stewarding approximately 2,400 acres with the Tribe. And the hope is to keep the integrity of the natural world," Kapsch notes, "but, in addition, to develop some amazing outdoor recreational opportunities through hiking trails, interpretive signs that's going to honor both the tribal perspective of the landscape along with our sort of traditional talking about the animal and then the things it likes to eat and things like that."
Plans are underway for citizens of the Rappahannock to give guided kayak tours.
"Hopefully, by next summer or by next fall. We're seriously working on it," says Assistant Chief Mark Fortune. "We purchased about 16 kayaks. And we're planning on purchasing more. And getting all that set up. We're using our people to go out and do these tours. A lot of people have already been through training."
Chief Richardson said the work to heal the lands that have been logged and bulldozed has already begun by planting native trees. And Julie King, an anthropologist from St. Mary’s College who works with the Tribe has already begun small excavations and has found Indigenous pottery and a colonial trade bead.
You can hear more about Fones Cliffs and the history of the Rappahannock Indian Tribe in the Tribal Truths Podcast.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.