Green has seen his friends and neighbors boys leave Todd s Tavern for schooling and work. Green knows his sons will be there to help him and admits their love of the land is unusual. Young people coming on don t want to farm because they can get a job and make money. In 1951, Agnes Whitlock purchased the 92-acre piece of property on which the original Todd s Tavern was built. The land where blood was spilled over North South differences more than 130 years ago is now an empty field dotted with a line of telephone poles.
Trees stand sentinel in the distance.
Sightseers from both sides of the Mason Dixon line often come to read the two Virginia Civil War Trails signs and try to envision the skirmishes that took place. Agnes and Robert Whitlock wanted to preserve the site as open land. In 1997, Agnes Whitlock deeded a half-acre strip of the land to Spotsylvania County to make a driveway for tour buses. Although development is the last thing Whitlock envisions for her land, the encroaching congestion of such roads as State Route 3 will eventually reach the historic crossroads, she said. She s already talked to people who are interested in her property.