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1/30/09 5:55 PMhttp://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/includes/print.cfm?sectionID=4&IssueID=38&ArticleID=436&print=1Page 1 of 8

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Urbanite #26 August 06

By: Melissa Faye HessIn late August the corn is so high you can barely seethe meetinghouse until you are right on it. In the openspace around the stone building, beside the humblegraveyard, men and women in separate groups talk inPennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect that few outsideof their community understand. It is not Sunday, butthey are dressed neatly in the distinctive clothing thatindicates to a familiar observer whether they are Amishor are from one of several Old Order Mennonitecommunities. A mixed gathering of these differentreligious sects at a Mennonite meetinghouse issomewhat rare; even rarer are the times whenmembers of the Amish community, who worship in their homes, participate in a function inside a churchbuilding. This night is special, for it is an annualassembly of those who wish to sing the oldest songsfrom their common roots in sixteenth-century Europe.There is no clock or bell, but the crowd knows it is timeto begin. They make their way inside the unassumingstructure devoid of decoration. Rows of backlessbenches center around a long wooden table. Talksettles down to a low hum. Several middle-aged menpass out the thick leather-bound hymnals, light a fewgas lamps, and make sure everyone has a seat. Withno formal introduction, one of the men at the centraltable sings out one, maybe two notes, and instantly theroom is flooded with sound. They know this first one byheart. Every voice sings unabashedly, full of fervor. Noone keeps time; there are no instruments. As the songscontinue, the slow, swelling sounds transport theuninitiated listener to another land, another time. Thesun sets and the voices sing on, the sound pouring outthe open window, making its way across the fields anddown into the darkening valley, as it has in this quietcorner of Pennsylvania for three centuries.The adjacent watersheds of the Conestoga Creek andthe Mill Creek rest on a limestone bedrock thatstretches across central Pennsylvania. It is a rollinglandscape of rich soils, well irrigated by numeroustributaries and springs—some of the most productivefarmland on the East Coast. At night, much of this placeremains a dark patch in the midst of the glowingmegalopolis of the northeastern United States. Viewedfrom a ridge, low-twinkling clusters spread evenlyacross black fields, marking the farmsteads of familieswho use gas lighting rather than electricity.The Amish settled in this area approximately 270 years

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ago, after fleeing from the Alsace and Palatinateregions of central Europe, where they had beenpersecuted for their particular religious beliefs in theviolent fallout of the Protestant Reformation. They foundpeace, freedom, and plenty of fertile land in WilliamPenn’s diverse and tolerant colony. Today, the MillCreek Valley remains the heart of the oldest andlargest settlement of Amish.To the north, the Conestoga Valley shelters an evenolder settlement of Anabaptists: Beginning in 1717,Mennonites began filling the Conestoga, and todaygroups of Old Order Mennonites, collectively the mostconservative branches of what is now a worldwidereligion, dominate this lush and slightly less-crowdedvalley.The contiguous network of family-owned-and-operatedAmish and Mennonite farms has been divided over thegenerations to the point that many farms are now at thesmallest size at which they can be profitable. It is amosaic of well-tended fields, ancient stone barns, solidmasonry farmhouses, frame outbuildings, and massivemetal silos; a gigantic earthwork that blends man-madeand natural elements, a cultural landscape that drawsthe curiosity of the world.My own Mennonite family traces its roots in Lancaster County back to the early eighteenth century. Asmembers of mainstream Mennonite congregations, themajority of my relatives are no longer “plain,” in thatthey do not live an overtly traditional lifestyle, but theystill hold to the tenets of the faith. My childhood in anold farmhouse surrounded by development, locatedabout a mile from the Mill Creek Valley, wasn’t muchdifferent from that of my non-Mennonite peers. After college in the Midwest, I pursued a career in historicpreservation, never suspecting that my first job as anarchitectural historian fresh out of graduate schoolwould bring me back home.What I found upon my return is that a new landscapethreatens to eclipse the rural community that the Amishand Mennonite cultures have created over threehundred years. The farm fields—which have producedan abundance of corn, tobacco, soybeans, vegetables,and feed for livestock—now sprout bumper crops of McMansion-choked cul-de-sac developments,retirement mega-villages, gated condo communities,and other near-instantaneous neighborhoods. This“Amish Country” that draws visitors from around theglobe may perish in this century.As early as the 1850s, magazines like The

Atlantic Monthly

were touting the simple wonders of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. In 1938,

National Geographic

dubbed it the “land of milk and honey,” andby 2001, 8.3 million visitors were traveling through thepristine Pennsylvania countryside making tourism, withmore than 29,000 employees, the second largest

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business in Lancaster.The multitude of marketing brochures promise visitors anostalgic journey to the past. The industry thrives onwhat outsiders want to believe about the “plain” people—that they are living in another world and time.Tourists thrill at a horse-and-buggy sighting. Minivansslow to soak in the view, their occupants doing their best to follow what they learned at the PennsylvaniaDutch Country Welcome Center on Route 30: Don’t betoo brazen with the picture-taking.Along with the tasty jellies, jams, and pies, visitors wantto consume the very goodness of the plain people asthey imagine it. They marvel at their meticuloushandicrafts, their antiquated transportation, their peculiar clothing and head coverings, and the lush,orderly open spaces of their farms. Even more so, theyare drawn by what they believe is not here: soullessshopping complexes, mind-numbing traffic, the din of cell phones, the hectic pace of modern life. They hopeto connect with a better and more wholesome past.The tourists, however, soon tire of the pastoral sceneand move on in search of other entertainment. Aburgeoning commercial strip east of Lancaster Citypushes farmland back every year to make room for thevery modernity that the tourists came to escape: factoryoutlets, chain restaurants, amusement complexes—alittle Vegas in Amish Country. You can hit the Polooutlet designed to look like a barn and go eat at a farm-housey Bob Evans. Increasingly, some tourists aredeciding to buy not just the quilts and quaintness of Lancaster County, but the land itself. Consumption isLancaster County’s true product, and it is thisconsumption that threatens to end Amish Country aswe know it.Development is not only destroying highly productivefarmland and forcing out a traditional culture, it is alsocreating a new landscape that brings with it a gnawingneed for new infrastructure, including roads, utilities,shopping, and services. In contrast to the originallandscape, which was shaped over time by the forcesof a spiritually bound community and focused on therelationship between man and nature, the newlandscape favors the individual. New development ismerely a more permanent form of consumption. Whenpeople go seeking the country life in droves, they candestroy the very elements they sought. Paradoxically,people who move into new communities in AmishCountry sometimes become very vocal opponents of further development of this landscape. Everyone wantshis or her little piece of blight to be an isolated piece of blight.In 2004, in the wake of this mounting development, Ireturned to Lancaster to join a team of architecturalhistorians documenting the two rural historic districts inthese valleys, covering close to 48,000 acres. My firm’swork involved visits to several hundred historic