VDOT Workers' Memorial and Scenic Overlook.

Overview

Pull off Interstate 64 at the second scenic overlook east of Afton Mountain, somewhere between mile markers 103 and 104, and you come to a wide grassy shoulder with a view down into the valley that has stopped travelers for generations. Most people stop for the view. What holds them, once they are out of the car, is the granite. Three profiles of workers in hard hats are cut into layered black, white, and gray stone, and at one end the profile simply opens, unfinished, so you can look straight through the space where a fourth worker would be, out to the same valley. That opening is deliberate. It stands for the missing.

This is the VDOT Workers' Memorial, the state's monument to the highway employees who died doing the work that keeps Virginia's roads passable. It was built for the families first, and for the traveling public second, and the site was chosen partly for that reason: it belongs to VDOT, it is easy to reach off the interstate, and it looks out over a serene stretch of country. The memorial sits in Greenwood, just over the Albemarle line, at the top of the mountain that Crozet drivers cross whenever they head west.

What you'll find at the overlook

The monument is 13 feet long and nearly 10 feet high, set on a grassy area within the pull-off. The three layered profiles are meant to reflect the range of people who have worked for the department; the black, white, and gray granite reads as a design choice and as a statement about who does this work. Around it, a landscape plan softens the stone: a native perennial wildflower bed, colorful trees, and a walkway were laid out to complement the memorial, and a daylily bed has since been added. In warm months the planting does a lot of quiet work, turning what could be a stark slab beside a highway into a place you might actually want to linger.

The design itself came from within the agency. It was chosen from 41 entries submitted by VDOT employees, and the winning concept was drawn by a Fredericksburg District location and design engineer, Harry Lee, together with his daughter Stephanie, then a studio arts senior at Mary Washington College. The wildflower and landscape plan was developed by Scott Johnson, at the time VDOT's Richmond District wildflower program and landscape design manager.

The names on the stone

The memorial carries the names of 134 employees, engraved in columns in no particular order. They died between 1928 and 2012. To be included, a person had to have been an active full-time or part-time state highway worker, and the death had to be work-related; every name confirmed so far belongs to someone killed in an on-the-job incident, many of them in work zones.

The individual stories, gathered on VDOT's own memorial page, are the reason this is not an abstract monument. There is Jesse Stewart Akers, an equipment operator crushed by a steamroller in 1970 at 62, survived by seven grandchildren. There is Carlos Ellis Keen, a 30-year veteran rear-ended by a gravel truck on Route 460 in 2012 while operating a backhoe, remembered as an avid gardener and fisherman devoted to his two pugs. There is Robert Hugh Crews, who as a young man in the Civilian Conservation Corps helped grade the slopes and build the overlooks along Skyline Drive, and who later gave more than 30 years to the Highway Department before he was killed on a Buckingham County road. The Arrington family was told their William "Woodrow" Arrington would have loved the view from Afton Mountain; the family of Vastine Arehart, killed in 1936 and survived by nine children, left a remembrance written by the daughter who was not yet three when he died.

Visiting

The overlook is open around the clock, every day of the week, and there is nothing to pay. It reads as a rest stop, but it rewards a slower visit: read a few of the names, notice the wildflowers, look through the open profile at the valley. The monument was dedicated on September 17, 2004, in a ceremony attended by nearly 200 family members, and VDOT began holding a remembrance there each spring during Work Zone Awareness Week.

The listed address is I-64, Greenwood, VA 22943. For general information you can reach VDOT at (800) 367-7623, and the full memorial page, with the story behind each name, is on the department's site at virginiadot.org. The next time you crest Afton on your way west out of Crozet, it is worth the few minutes to pull over.

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