s in the Basin such
colonies are a sort of haphazard mushroom growth with miserable side
effects.

Local forms of this phenomenon have always been around, but have seldom
been extensive enough to seem anything but picturesque. A farmer sells
off a few riverside lots, for example, because he can't plow that part
of his land anyhow, and is happy enough to make a little money and at
the same time oblige some county-seat acquaintances who want a place to
loaf and fish on weekends. So a few tarpaper shacks go up with privies
for sanitation, and perhaps someone hauls in an old school bus and props
it on concrete blocks for his own vacation home. Here a jolly time is
had by all with full knowledge--since they are locals, aware of how
things around them work--that sooner or later the river is going on a
rampage and will carry away the whole little community, with small loss
to anyone.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Exploitation changes the picture, however, as exploitation is wont to
do. If a whole neighborhood of farmers seeks such profits, or if real
estate men get into the act, or big development corporations that may be
operating from almost anywhere in the country, the scale enlarges and
purple prose may appear in the metropolitan newspapers to lure nostalgic
suburbans out to examine an assortment of lots sliced fine for maximum
yield and priced most often according to their proximity to water. Water
is usually involved, for it is the fundamental outdoor attraction,
whether it is a mountain creek or a river or a made pond or a deep bay
off the lower estuary. Its ultimate pollution is often involved as well,
for sanitary arrangements tend to be rudimentary and inadequate for
concentrations of people, especially when the "second homes" start
turning into permanent homes with the retirement of their owners or
their sale to younger locals. This latter process, too, sometimes leads
to a future demand for schools and other services whose need was not
foreseen by local governments when they permitted the development.

In some places along the estuary and the Potomac main stem and the
Shenandoah, the creation of such communities has already led to
wholesale, ugly, unsanitary clutter along considerable stretches of once
beautiful shoreline. It is beginning to shape up even on remoter
waterways like the Cacapon and the South Branch, and in some parts of
the mountains. As new interstate highways and other avenue of access are