Cultural Preservation Program

VDOT’s staff of archaeologists and architectural historians focuses on reviewing plans for new construction and highway maintenance to ensure that effects on property of cultural and historical significance are avoided or minimized.  This work commonly involves conducting studies to identify historic properties, such as archaeological sites, buildings and other structures, old cemeteries, and battlefields. 

The Brook Run site was first discovered while conducting a routine cultural resource study for the expansion of Route 3 in Culpeper County.  Dating back to over 11,000 years ago, the site was once an ancient quarry where Virginia’s earliest settlers extracted large rocks of jasper that were later fashioned into spear points, knives and other tools.  Given the importance of this site, VDOT adjusted its highway improvement plans to avoid the most significant archaeological deposits.  

When effects cannot be avoided, VDOT often conducts professional archaeological excavations in advance of highway construction to preserve significant historical information.  Along Route 199, just outside of Williamsburg, archaeological excavations uncovered the remains of a late 18th-century slave quarter associated with the country plantation of James Southall, the owner of the Raleigh Tavern. In Danville, before work associated with rehabilitation of the Main Street Bridge was begun, VDOT conducted archaeological excavations in the back yards of two residences in an adjacent neighborhood to learn more about the lives of mill workers in the city’s important textile industry from about 1890 through 1930. 

The Cultural Preservation Program is also involved in implementing a management plan for VDOT’s 55 historic bridges that have been determined eligible for listing on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.  Among these are five covered bridges.  

VDOT’s stewardship of the Commonwealth’s heritage can also involve unusual activities, such as the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s recent transfer to The Museum and White House of the Confederacy of a rare and valuable Civil War cannon that VDOT purchased for a wayside in 1932.