ABINGDON, Va. – The Washington County Board of Supervisors has scheduled a public hearing for Nov. 23 on whether to give about 96 acres of mountain land to Emory & Henry College.
The land is from an estate, willed to the county as a nature preserve by the late Grace Rust of Eaton, Ohio.
The property, about three miles south of Mendota, belonged to her late husband, William Rust, and was his family land. The will stipulates that it’s to be used only as a wildlife preserve – and that a small family cemetery be maintained.
County Attorney Lucy Phillips said the county doesn’t have the ability to maintain property as a wildlife preserve but is working with the college and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation to carry out Rust’s final wishes.
Ed Davis, director of the environmental studies program at Emory & Henry, said the college will use the tract as an outdoor classroom, taking students to study tree growth and document plants and wildlife.
“It’s the kind of land where, if you were walking on it, you would have to be careful or you would fall down a very steep slope,” Davis said. “It’s not land that can be farmed or built on.”
He said the forestland, by sequestering carbon dioxide, also will help the college in reducing its carbon footprint, a goal it is pursing in an effort to be more environmentally responsible.
In the future, Davis said, the site might also be a destination for pupils at nearby Valley Institute Elementary School, whom college students could lead on educational nature hikes.
James Moody, a distant relative of Grace Rust and co-executor of the will, said a Rust ancestor first bought the property in the 1850s, and members of the family lived there until sometime in the 1920s, when the last of them followed relatives to Ohio.
“I don’t think there was much going on in Washington County [Virginia], and Dayton [Ohio] was a booming city at that time,” Moody said. “They already had relatives within 20 miles of Dayton.”
When the land went for a tax sale in 1927, William Rust bought it to keep it in the family, Moody said, and though he lived his life in Ohio, he stayed true to his Virginia roots. Since his death in 1974, his widow has several times been offered money for the land but refused to sell, Moody said; both she and her husband wanted to keep it like it was.
While a great-niece retains ownership of the gas and oil lease on the property, the land is to be protected by a conservation easement that restricts development as specified in the will.
According to Grace Rust’s obituary, printed in the Eaton, Ohio, Register-Herald in 2008, she was a longtime schoolteacher and lifelong member of the Lutheran church. She was a painter, who kept a keen interest for the beauty in nature “and empathy for animals who could not speak for themselves.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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