The Appalachian Trail runs beside the properties of the Cochrans and Wingates in the Catawba Valley, making the fabled footpath a part of their lives.

But like landowners from Maine to Georgia, the two Southwest Virginia families have different opinions about encroaching development, which has become the biggest threat to the national scenic trail.

Bill and Katherine Cochran, who live beside the AT, support conservation easements and tough land-use regulations to protect the trail and Catawba's open spaces. They put several of their acres into a scenic easement, promising never to develop it. They believe some sacrifice is required for the greater good of the community and the natural world.

"We recognize the value of the trail -- it's a national treasure," said Bill Cochran, an outdoors writer. "When you live alongside it, you're part of something bigger than yourself."

Harold Wingate, whose Homeplace restaurant property abuts the AT, said he also supports the iconic footpath.

But he favors a free marketplace and strong property rights, where landowners don't give up without a fight -- or a fistful of dollars.

"I understand the ecological benefits" of conservation easements and land-use regulations, said Wingate, "but I'm against those restrictions without fair compensation. We certainly need to consider benefits to the majority, but also the rights of the individual property owners."

From New England to the Deep South, the AT is threatened by subdivisions, road-building, power lines and other development under construction or consideration along the 2,175-mile footpath, according to the National Park Service and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages the AT.

But not everyone agrees that development is a threat to the East's open spaces.

The National Association of Home Builders and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates a free-market approach to environmental policy, say people should have the right to live where they want without excessive government regulations that worsen sprawl, pollution, traffic, home prices and energy costs.

Appalachian Trail advocates believe otherwise.

"A lot of people take the AT for granted, but it needs constant protection," said Roger Holnback, president of the Roanoke chapter of the ATC and the executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust. "This is a critical time."

Conservation easements

Catawba, an American Indian word meaning "people of the river," is anchored by its namesake valley and creek as well as the North Fork of the Roanoke River.

It's a place of pastures, mountains and mineral springs once hailed for their healing powers. For generations, farm families looked out for one another, rode to church in horse-drawn buggies and dug their graves by hand. Today, modern bungalows and McMansions are popping up amid the old farmhouses, but it remains a tight-knit and sparsely populated community of about 1,100 people who are largely protected from outside sprawl by Catawba Mountain.

Most Catawba residents want to preserve the valley's quietude, and turn out in force against proposals ranging from cell towers to subdivisions.

But few Catawbans have signed conservation easements, which give Virginia landowners federal and state tax breaks in exchange for permanently prohibiting or limiting development on their land.

The federal tax deduction is worth 100 percent of the land's development value that is being given up. The landowner also gets state income tax credits -- 50 percent this year and 40 percent next year -- that can be sold to generate income for the landowner.

Conservation easements include preservation of open space, natural resources, habitat, water quality and scenic quality.

Holnback has promoted conservation easements for more than a decade at Catawba Valley Civic League and Ruritan Club meetings, but few people have signed up.

"They have a very independent, libertarian mind-set," Holnback said. "All we can do is plant the seed and wait."

Catawba's large land-owning families regard their land as their pension and a legacy to be passed to descendants who can decide whether to live there or sell the property in pieces or all at once.

"There's a lot of development pressure in Catawba, although there's still a lot of open, rural space," said Jim Johnson, an associate dean at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources. "The historical farms aren't being broken down into major subdivisions, but they're certainly being fragmented."

Some older landowners grumble that newcomers -- or anyone whose ancestors aren't buried under weathered tombstones in the scattered family cemeteries here -- are pushing too hard for conservation easements.

"You don't pressure country people or they'll just tune you out," said Louise Garman, whose farm has been in her family for five generations.

AT advocates say they don't want to stop all development, just those projects that degrade the trail experience. Up and down the AT, they're promoting conservation easements, buying land for buffer zones, watch-dogging development proposals and advocating land-use plans to protect natural resources.

Currently, major development proposals along the AT include subdivisions with thousands of houses, three pipelines, three power lines, three highways and one wind turbine facility, said Don Owen, environmental protection specialist with the National Park Service's Appalachian National Scenic Trail headquarters in Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

"It's a never-ending battle," Owen said.

Appropriate growth?

Nationwide, 70 percent of rural lands are expected to change ownership in the next decade as aging family farmers face tougher markets, rising costs, their children leaving for the city and developers looking for retirement and vacation home sites for millions of baby boomers.

AT officials worry that Catawba soon will start to resemble nearby southern Botetourt County, where upscale subdivisions are replacing farmland along U.S. 220.

"The Catawba Valley's a classic example," Holnback said. "People there care about the land, but times are changing and land they paid $50 an acre for a long time ago could be sold for $4,000 to $5,000 an acre today."

Catawba is mostly zoned agricultural and designated a rural preservation area. Roanoke County's land-use regulations allow little commercial growth and discourage high-density residential development; each new house needs at least 3 acres with at least 200 feet of state-maintained road frontage and an approved well and septic system.

"You can't prohibit growth outright, but we don't want inappropriate growth in the Catawba area," said Janet Scheid, chief planner for Roanoke County.

Curbing 'McMansions'

This summer, the city of Roanoke donated a 42-acre easement to the ATC to relocate a steep section of the trail in the Carvins Cove watershed. The city also is considering putting into a conservation easement about 12,000 acres in the cove's watershed that abuts 14 miles of the AT.

Frankie and Louise Garman, who raise beef cattle on their 70-acre farm, said they respect public and private landowners who sign conservation easements.

The Garmans love their land, but they haven't signed a conservation easement because they want to let their two sons and five grandchildren decide whether to build their own houses on their farm or sell it.

"If we didn't have children," Louise Garman said, "we'd seriously consider an easement ourselves because people should enjoy the beauty of the open spaces" in the Catawba Valley.

Holnback, in his roles with the ATC and WVLT, continues to look for opportunities to buy property and promote conservation easements near the trail in the Catawba and Daleville-Troutville areas. He's evaluating 175 acres for sale near Dragons Tooth and arranging a conservation easement for 235 acres on Tinker Mountain.

AT officials also are supporting Virginia Tech's effort to protect the old state-owned farm site in the heart of Catawba Valley.

The former 450-acre farm has been discussed as a potential location for a state prison or a bioengineering company.

But Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources wants to demolish the dilapidated farm buildings and use the site as an open-air classroom to teach students, professionals and the public about conservation and natural resources, Johnson said.

Virginia Tech is seeking funding for the project, which the school hopes to complete in five years. The project would include an interpretive nature path connecting to the Appalachian Trail.

"The Tech farm is truly the keystone -- as it goes, so goes the valley," Holnback said. "That's our big fear, McMansions popping up in the middle of the Catawba Valley."

'Big dog' versus sprawl

Some 20 miles north of the Catawba Valley, the AT enters the Daleville-Troutville area, where the sounds of songbirds mingle with the cacophony of motorized vehicles at the juncture of Interstate 81, U.S. 220 and U.S. 11. The three roads carry thousands of vehicles a day past fast-food restaurants, gas stations and other businesses.

The AT was built to escape such urbanization, but the area does provide through-hikers with the guilty pleasure of a hot shower, cooked meal and soft bed.

AT advocates long ago accepted that some trail sections were already highly developed, but they try to limit further encroachment on the trail.

The AT's status as a national park unit means its future must be considered when developers come knocking.

In the past decade, an expanded U.S. 58 was rerouted to avoid the AT and the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, and American Electric Power's new 765-kilovolt line was rerouted so it crossed the AT only once, where Interstate 77 already crosses the trail.

Currently, trail advocates are monitoring proposals to widen I-81 and U.S. 220 and reconfigure the Daleville-Troutville interchange, which would wipe out a section of the Appalachian Trail.

"The AT is a big dog," Holnback said. "You can't mess directly with the AT without the AT's permission. We have that federal mandate."

Still, Appalachian Trail supporters from Maine to Georgia worry that sprawl is having a corrosive effect not just on the AT, but also on Americans' connection to nature.

"The AT started as an avenue of solitude, but it's changed in our lifetime to become Main Street USA in a lot of ways," said Bill Cochran, a retired outdoors editor for The Roanoke Times.

"We've seen changes in the attitudes of hikers, too. The older ones still want that wilderness experience and they're appalled by all the development, but the younger ones just seem to accept it as part of life."