Virginia's 44th state park opened last month in the mountains of Highland County. Its backstory includes agriculture, hunting tours, and a battle over the defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[river rushing over rocks]
The road to Virginia's newest state park, Hayfields, in Highland County, winds along the bucolic Bullpasture River. As I drove with my dog, Cori, we saw what looked like a juvenile bald eagle soaring between the bordering blue ridgelines.
BRYAN MCGRAW: Eagle sightings are almost daily here. … And we have the ospreys and all sorts of owls and ducks. … We have deer, bear, bobcat, coyotes. Pretty much, if it lives in Highland County, it lives in Hayfields State Park.
Bryan McGraw is a park ranger and the head of maintenance here. The property has over 1,000 acres of rolling farmland and hilly woodland. There are currently four hiking trails open, with more on the way.
First, Cori and I traversed a golden, grassy plain out to Bear Pond. [dog splashes in the pond] We didn't see any bears, but Cori was fascinated by scat and other smells. [dog sniffs] We cut uphill into the woods, where a series of birds chattered at us and each other. [walking through the leaves, birds calling]
McGraw's connection with this land goes way back – his family owned the property from around 1985 to 2017.
MCGRAW: I've farmed it pretty extensively over all those years. Managed for cattle. We raised poultry. I also had a hunting and fishing operation where I guided people fly fishing and deer and turkey hunting.
Prior to the McGraws, the farm was owned by the extended Robson-Graham-Coiner family, going back to the 1850s. Its path to becoming a state park was long and winding. In 2014, State Sen. Creigh Deeds began introducing budget amendments to purchase land somewhere in Highland County for a state park.
CREIGH DEEDS: It's absolutely beautiful up there, and my sense was, a state park could create a destination … point in Highland County, and it could create a lot of economic activity.
He said former State Sen. Emmett Hanger was an advocate, too.
DEEDS: The state park system is for everybody. Everybody deserves recreation.
Highland resident Michael Bedwell, a retired teacher and principal, and his wife Donna read about the senator's efforts.
MICHAEL BEDWELL: It would boost our economy, and it's always nice to show off the beautiful place where you live.
They were part of a small group that founded the organization, "Friends of Highland State Park."
BEDWELL: We did a lot of things in the very beginning like put out petitions at local businesses and sugar camps during our Maple Festival.
Then came the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. In 2016, news broke that Dominion Energy and the other developers had to change its route to avoid sensitive habitat in the George Washington National Forest. Instead, it would cross 10 conservation easements in Bath, Highland, Augusta, and Nelson counties.
A conservation easement is a legal agreement a landowner makes to preserve the rural nature of their property. It stays with that land in perpetuity. The mechanism for this can be explained through a 'bundle of sticks' metaphor for property rights. One stick is the right to occupy the land. Another stick listeners might be familiar with represents the mineral rights. Another represents the development rights, and that's what a landowner gives away to a public agency when they put a conservation easement on their land. One big "holder" of conservation easements in the commonwealth is the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, or VOF –
BRETT GLYMPH: … whose mission is to conserve special places, open space, and historic resources all across our commonwealth.
Brett Glymph is their executive director. When Dominion wanted to build the pipeline across conservation easements, it had to get those development rights from the VOF, which was meant to safeguard them. Glymph said that once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declared the pipeline was necessary, that superseded their state-level authority to prohibit Dominion's access to the easements.
What they could do was tell Dominion to provide other property as a trade for the land where conservation easements would be violated. So, in 2017, Dominion bought the Hayfields property through an organization called The Conservation Fund, which then gave it to the VOF, plus more than $4 million in "stewardship funding."
GLYMPH: We have an obligation under the law to provide the highest level of protection that we have for land that's in our portfolio. I believe that we did a very good job in defending that interest.
As the local newspaper, The Recorder, documented, some affected landowners and local residents felt burned by the way this played out. But the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was ultimately canceled in 2020, with developers blaming environmentalists' lawsuits for delaying construction and raising costs. So, the landowners who were in its path still had intact conservation easements, and the state had the Hayfields property.
In 2022, Sen. Deeds sponsored a budget amendment that instructed the VOF to transfer the property to the Department of Conservation and Recreation for a state park. Bedwell's group became the "Friends of Hayfields State Park." It opened this October.
BEDWELL: In the next little while, there will be an approximately two year period of master planning, where … state park personnel will meet with the community and just kind of outline and see what the community wants.
For example, camping areas could be on the table. As for Bedwell?
BEDWELL: I'd like to see a lot of dark sky activities – a lot of astronomy, telescopes, star parties. … I'd also like to see a zipline. [laughs]
[birds calling]
The park is open daily but has limited hours, so visitors are advised to call ahead before making the trip.
