University of Virginia Library

Green Springs Penal Facility Arouses Public Outcry

News Analysis

State Prison Threatens Tranquility
Of Valley's Historical Landmarks

By ANN BROWN

Visualize 10,000 acres of green fields,
woods and ponds, filling a bowl shaped
valley. Picture a circle of farm houses
built in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Then imagine, if you can, a
state prison strategically located in the
center of the bowl.

This is Green Springs in Louisa
County whose earliest residents settled in
this rare fertile area when Virginia was
still a British colony. Its homes were built
between the mid-1700's and 1860. Its farms
continue to be cultivated as they were 200
years ago.

Green Springs has remained almost
untouched by the modernization which has
crept so insidiously into almost every other
rural area you could name. But this slice of
tranquility may be about to meet its Waterloo
in the form of a hexagonal prison, 600 feet in
diameter, sporting a sixty foot tall gun tower
and a ten foot barbed wire fence.

The residents have united to fight what they
consider to be a threat to the beauty and
historical value of Green Springs. They do not
oppose the building of the prison. They feel
however, that a better location could be found.
As one farm owner commented, "There is no
reason in the world why we can't have modern
prison reform and historic preservation without
one killing the other."

Those people who are concerned about the
prison's coming to Green Springs wonder why
this particular spot was chosen. The four
building medical and receiving center is to be
built on a 200 acre tract of land bought by the
state for $160,000, four times the value of the
land, according to several area residents.

Only thirty acres of this tract can be built
on as the remainder is soft and boggy.

According to several residents, Governor
Linwood Holton is stressing the rehabilitative
value of the rural setting; but they point out
that the prison will have no exterior windows.
As one member of the Green Springs
Association put it, "The prisoners aren't even
going to see it."

But the people who live in Green Springs
will be able to see the prison. One resident
estimated that the structure would be visible
from at least two miles away. Mrs. James
Gallagher, whose husband owns Prospect Hill,
stated, "In the Architect's words, it will be
dead gray poured concrete."

The reasons for the state's decision which
went against the advice of the Virginia Historic
Landmarks Commission, remain undiscovered.
Many Green Springs residents feel that the state
hopes to purchase the adjoining 1,000 acres of
land, now owned by Dick Purcell who sold the
tract on which the prison is to be located, in
order to move the entire state prison system to
Green Springs.

These residents feel that locating the new
prison there would do irrevocable harm to this
area. With the state facility would inevitably
come motels and drive-in restaurants. Access
roads would have to be fashioned by widening,
straightening and paving the winding country
lanes which have connected the local farms for
centuries.

Mr. Holton has stated that the prison will
not harm Green Springs, that, in fact, the
prison is the first step in the preservation of the
district. A resident reported that the Governor
did visit the Springs. She stated that Mr. Holton
flew in a helicopter which landed on the
prison site. The governor walked around on the
site, then boarded the helicopter to return to
Richmond. The Green Springs Association
invited Mr. Holton to participate in a recent
tour of the area's homes, but he declined.

The Virginia Historic Landmarks
Commission's report stated, "The Green
Springs area harbors an assemblage of rural
architecture that is unique in Virginia...
Twenty-three of these structures are recorded
in the archives of the Library of Congress."

Mrs. Gallagher remarked that each house in
the district is important alone, but that "as a
complete unit it's just incomparable." The area
represents a complete plantation community,
served by its own stores and churches. It is rare
indeed that such an area should have remained
unchanged, as though time had ceased to pass
in this green corner of Louisa County.

The residents are convinced that the coming
of the prison will destroy these unique qualities
and they have pursued every possible means to
dissuade the state from proceeding with the
project. They have collected from eight to ten
thousand signatures on a petition declaring
opposition to this prison site.

The Green Springs Association also launched
court action against the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration, a Justice
Department agency which had granted funds to
the state to construct the medical and receiving
center. In a hearing before the Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals, the association won what one
resident termed "a landmark decision" which
prevented the state from using the federal
allocation until the LEAA complied with the
provisions of the National Historical
Preservation and the National Environmental
Policy Acts.

Following the court decision, the state
announced that it would go on with
construction of the prison with or without

Access Roads Would Be Widened, Paved
federal funds. Several residents have suggested
that the state is merely making loud noises
about pursuing a multi-million dollar project
which it cannot afford.

Following the court decision, the state
announced that it would go on with
construction of the prison with or without
federal funds. Several residents have suggested
that the state is merely making loud noises
about pursuing a multi-million dollar project
which it cannot afford. As one property owner
remarked, "Our guess is that with money so
tight in the upcoming budget, they are going to
be doing a lot of soul searching."

In the meantime, Green Springs watches and
waits. It looks out from the windows of its two
hundred year-old houses and from the rises in
its fertile fields toward a spot between a red
barn and a white one, roughly marking the
boundaries of its doom.