No saving grace: the government protected the New from a power company, but its scenic beauty could ruin the river.

• Author: Tursi, Frank
• Position: Real estate development along New River

Twisting and turning on a tortuous path through the northwestern mountains, the New River is prized for its breathtaking vistas and feisty smallmouth bass. And it is revered for its unfathomable age. The New - an odd name for such a river - is older than the mountains themselves. It is the oldest river on the continent and one of the oldest in the world.

A power company planned to dam the New, but the resulting outcry eventually reached national proportions and a section of the New was added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System in 1976. Environmentalists, landowners and people who like pretty mountain rivers were comforted. The dams were stopped; the New was "saved."

But not from summer homes or mobile homes, A-frames or recreational vehicles. The scenic designation did nothing to control development along the river's banks. It ignited a 10-year real-estate boom by giving the remote valley a marketable commodity: a genuine, listed "wild and scenic river."

"What we have now, in places, is a tour of homes instead of a scenic river," says Janet Hoyle, who grew up along the river in Ashe County and now heads an environmental group that has worked to protect it. "The values for which the river was designated are eroding rapidly. It's almost like someone running downhill who can't quite stop. The river certainly isn't saved."

Maybe Hoyle's assessment isn't the most objective. How about Gov. Jim Martin's? The New River figured prominently in his recent announcement of a plan to control development in the mountains. The New, he said in January, was in danger of becoming a "wild and scenic drainage culvert."

And then there is American Rivers, a national conservation group that lobbies to protect rivers. It rates the "saved" New as one of the 10 most-endangered rivers in the country.

Clearly, something went awry. State officials say a lack of money and a weak law have hampered their efforts to preserve the New. Critics claim the state moved too slowly and never really had its heart in the matter. Almost everyone says the counties should have restricted development along the river with "land-use controls."

That's a euphemism for the ugly Z" word. Zoning still is not a popular notion in most of the state's rural counties. It's viewed as somewhat un-American and a damper on economic growth. County commissioners in Ashe and Alleghany counties, which contain all of the protected section of the New, have never shown interest in zoning land around the river. They wouldn't remain in office long if they did.

Land-use control, though, is the way the state seems to be leaning these days. Its current strategy of trying to buy land or easements along protected rivers will fail, state officials say, because there will never be enough money. A better approach, they say, is to require counties to adopt laws that restrict development along protected rivers.

Such talk makes Steve Douglas uneasy. He's a native of Ashe County and owns land along the protected section of the New. Like many of his neighbors, he didn't sell conservation easements to the state because he doesn't want people telling him what he can do with his land.

Mountain people often get lost in the arguments about the New, he says. They're an independent lot who just want to be left alone. They don't want developers from Florida or officials with the state pestering them about their land, Douglas says. Many would respond just as he did when asked how he would "save" the New River:

"All I want to do is live here. I'm not bothering the river. The native people just want to be left alone. The only thing the people in this area have ever wanted is to live their lives and not to be bothered and harassed. The people who live along this river have been the most persecuted in the state. You're caught between the business people on one side and environmentalists on the other side."

When we reached the top, we saw mountains to the right, to the left, before and behind us, rising like great waves in a storm.

Bishop August G. Spangenberg, 1752

The old blacktop twists out of Piney Creek and into Alleghany County. There it is, around a sharp curve - the bishop's ocean of mountains. White Top Mountain looms ahead in Virginia. Its bald dome looks like snow in the early sun. The rounded peaks of...