Villagers Struggle to Save ‘Landmark’ Status : Preservation: Just 40 miles from the city, the tiny town may soon be swallowed up. A compact would pay landowners for low density.

H. Catherine Ladd stood between a log house and brick mill in Waterford, Va., one recent morning, enjoying a pastoral view she holds essential to the future of the historic village.

Catoctin Creek winds past bare farm fields, scattered trees and fenced sheep pastures. To the west, a low ridge meets the pale sky. This scene, virtually unchanged in Waterford’s 258 years, is menaced by encroaching development, Ladd said.

“You take that setting away and you have a little village you would find anywhere,” said Ladd, 59. She is executive director of the Waterford Foundation, a nonprofit preservation group. “I see it as a fine piece of crystal,” she said. “Once you lose it, it’s gone forever.”

After two years of work at a cost of more than $200,000, the foundation has found what it thinks is a way to protect those views.

Under the terms of an unusual agreement, landowners would voluntarily limit the number of houses on about 800 acres surrounding the village. In exchange, the foundation would pay the farmers for any loss of property value.

The so-called Waterford Compact, one of the few of its kind in the nation, is the latest example of a zealous regard for heritage and aesthetics in Waterford, which is 40 miles west of the District of Columbia.

Since the 1940s, preservationists here have shown that they care more for historic ambience than growth, and believe a good view is worth a thousand houses.

“The tie that binds us is an aesthetic one,” said Julie Savage Lea, a painter of landscapes who moved to Waterford 20 years ago. “That might be seen as snobbishness.”

The National Park Service considers Waterford a living museum piece. The Department of the Interior granted the village national-landmark status in 1970 because of its landscape and rows of brick, stone and timber buildings that date to 1733.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation began publishing an education newsletter from Waterford in March. The Waterford Foundation also plans to hire an architect to design renovations for its headquarters and an education center for the trust at the vacant Waterford Old School.

Preservationists also say Waterford is a testing ground: the challenge is to save the village and its bucolic views from the housing boom that transformed other parts of eastern Loudoun County in the 1980s.

“Loudoun County is growing at an extraordinary rate,” said Kathleen Hunter of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “The surrounding rural landscape is as historically significant as its village core. . . . It’s a document of our history, just as important as a document in an archive.”

Settled by a Quaker family, Waterford became a bustling agricultural center in the early 1800s. It remains much as it was in the 19th Century, with a post office, one store, four churches and five working farms.

“It is considered to be an excellent example of a small agrarian town,” said Jean Travers, a National Park Service historian.

Yet the village’s narrow streets are more and more congested, and residents say the cost of living is rising. Houses are selling at $275,000 to $600,000 each. “It’s an address ,” said Charles Fishback, a real estate agent with the Raymond Group Inc. in Leesburg.

If the Waterford Compact works, new construction will be held to about 65 houses on the 800 acres that surround the town. Under current zoning and without the compact, more than 290 houses could be added.

About 250 people live in the Waterford area, and several houses are going up now. Travers said that such land-use compacts are gaining favor in preservation circles.

The foundation, which has been negotiating for more than a year, hopes to reach agreements with four major landowners by June 1, Ladd said. One farmer who joined the compact last year received about $200,000 to build 14 houses on his land instead of 60 or more houses, as zoning would allow. Under permanent deed restrictions, no other development would be allowed.

The current recession and near cessation of building in Loudoun County makes this a good time to follow through with the other owners, Ladd said. Money for the compact will come from grants, new members and the crafts fair the foundation sponsors each October. Last year, the three-day fair brought in more than $200,000 from about 42,000 visitors, Ladd said.

It appears unlikely that the foundation will be completely successful, however. Some who live near Waterford are skeptical of the group and fear that it wants to shortchange them for the sake of pretty vistas. Albert Carr, who owns a 400-acre farm east of the village, said he won’t cooperate.

“It’s our land. We’ll do with it what we want,” said Carr, 72. “I have asked them not to contact me in any way, shape or form.”

Others have a different view. William Burch, state attorney for Loudoun County and one of Waterford’s largest landowners, said village history would disappear without the views. “You’ve lost the context,” he said.