Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center
In 1995, a member of Charlottesville's city council drew Kay Slaughter's attention to the statues around the city of Charlottesville. Many of these states needed restoration. Slaughter noticed the Lewis and Clark statue on the list and since she had just read Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, she believed that Charlottesville needed to celebrate Lewis and Clark with more than just a statue. Slaughter believed a museum would compliment and tie together the two other historic museums in the area, Ash Lawn and Monticello. In addition, the Exploratory Center would teach citizens and visitors about the history of Albemarle County and hopefully increase their interest in protecting the buildings and areas that had contributed to the area's history (Henley, 2002).
The city of Charlottesville donated money for a feasibility study of different sites for the center (Zippin, 2002). When the planners for Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, Inc examined Darden Towe Memorial Park they realized that with its proximity to Buena Vista they could incorporate the George Rogers Clark museum (Wheeler, 2002). The new plan for the site consisted of three parts, an indoor museum with artifacts, an outdoor trail along the river that travels through both Darden Towe Park and Buena Vista, and the clapboard house at Buena Vista (Henley, 2002). Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center, Inc approached Clara Belle Wheeler about donating a small portion of the land and the house to the center. Wheeler agreed for her own interest in Lewis and Clark and the history of Albemarle County and for her mother's memory (Wheeler, 2002).
Interim Executive Director of the Exploratory Center Larry Zippin projects that they will be able to break ground in 2004 with the entire project completed by 2006 (Zippin, 2002). Henley, Wheeler, and Zippin all urged the importance of the indoor and outdoor experience for the trail. Wheeler wanted the site to represent what the Clarks would have known and to try and convey the experience of scouting out the West. She believes that "Monticello is lovely, but it is not the outdoor along the river experience that you need to feel and touch and experience (Wheeler, 2002)."
Besides a refurbished cabin, trail, and museum, the center will also have a keelboat. Center founder Francis McQ. Lawrence envisioned the project because of his interest in keelboats (Zippin, 2002). Since 2001, area children have come out to help build the boat at Darden Towe Park to commemorate not only Lewis and Clark but to draw awareness to the area's history and new museum (Daily Progress, A6). To further educate the public about the proposed project and increase interest in Lewis and Clark, the Exploratory Center will have a party, the Bison-tennial, at Buena Vista with the types of food Lewis and Clark ate on the trail in January 2003 (Wheeler, 2002).
In looking at the different types of legislation in existence to protect historic homes, and the interest home owners and outside organizations have in these homes, education was a recurrent theme. All of these preservation methods center on knowing the history of the place and passing on that knowledge in order to increase public and private interest in maintaining and protecting these landmarks. Education is crucial to preservation because it connects a site or artifact to the nation's history and transforms a place into a local, state, or national treasure.
