News & Events

Coming Events

Preservation Month

Sunday, May 18, 2025, 2 p.m.

Kendal Auditorium

Dan Pezzoni, Architectural Historian, presents:

Wrapt In Deep Mystery: Native American Ritual Stone Construction in Rockbridge County

Virginia is home to thousands of ritual stone structures built by Native American peoples in centuries past. The presentation will focus on structure locales in Rockbridge County and environs, including Cole Mountain, North Mountain Gap, Petites Gap, and House Mountain. The presentation will explain how the piles, cairns, effigies, linear structures, and other architectural forms differ from utilitarian historic-period structures like field clearing piles. Some of the structures are representational, which relates them to the allied medium of rock art. The presentation will propose interpretations consistent with what is known about Southeastern native cultures and beliefs through ethnography and comparison to other forms of material culture. As a reporter with the Rockbridge County News remarked in 1893 about the stone mound that once stood in North Mountain Gap, the structures have “always been wrapt in deep mystery.”

Saturday, May 24, 2025, 2 p.m.

Manly Memorial Baptist Church

Taylor Cole of Conservation Partners, presents:

Conservation of Historic Properties in Virginia

Rounding out Preservation Month, we look forward to learning more about conservation easements and other open-space and agricultural conservation opportunities in our area. Our speaker is Taylor Cole, who will share recollections of growing up in Lexington, of its residents, and of its historic buildings as they were in the 1950s and 1960s. He’ll also discuss historic homes and properties protected by conservation easements around Virginia; and describe the fundamentals and benefits of donating conservation easements and gifts of land. The program will conclude with a question-and-answer session as time permits. Free and open to the public.

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