In Loudoun County, Virginia, growth dominates almost everything, pitting the rapidly developing east against the rustic west, horse and hunt country that brushes up against the storied Blue Ridge Mountains. Once a Civil War battleground, Loudoun is still at war--with itself--over growth. - New York Times, 8/26/07

THE land around Unison, Va. — a clutch of homes 50 miles west of Washington, with no stoplight or commercial enterprise —looks much as it did around 145 years ago when Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in the fields.

And it seems destined to stay that way, for now.

Last year, the Unison Preservation Society, a nonprofit organization founded in 2001, dissuaded a developer from building 28 homes on 90 acres, with the threat of endless litigation.

Now, the society’s members are seeking to have 21 square miles around the town declared a national Civil War battlefield by the National Park Service. This designation, according to Paul Hodge, the president and co-founder of the Unison Preservation Society, “will provide huge tax incentives for restoration of historic buildings,” as well as “protection against cellphone towers, and also from widening or paving a roadway.”

Unison is one of several small unincorporated towns in Loudoun County, Va., struggling to preserve their bucolic environment. The county’s population has surged by 60 percent from 2000 to this year, to 271,636 from 169,599, making it among the nation’s fastest growing, according to data from the county and the Census Bureau. It is also the richest, with a median household income of $98,483 in 2005, the bureau said....