For years, driving up and down U.S. 13 through Virginia’s hauntingly beautiful Eastern Shore has been a big part of my life. I first went there as a 3-year-old on the now defunct Kiptopeke Ferry, traveling to Cape Charles on one of my family’s many northward pilgrimages from our home in North Carolina. The ferry was then the only link the Shore had with the rest of Virginia. As a Boston-based college student in the early 1970s, I made the north-south run regularly. When I reported for The Virginian-Pilot, I rode out a hurricane at the Chincoteague Coast Guard station and explored the Nature Conservancy’s barrier islands. By the early 1990s, I was an editor in New York City and drove up and down U.S. 13 with my baby daughters in the back seat. I’ll never forget listening to the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings on the radio for hours one hot August day as I whizzed south past roadside Confederate flags and yellow signs hawking Virginia ham and fireworks.

During this 40-year period, I haven’t seen that much change on the Shore. I confess that I am glad of it. I realize that it is a poor area that young people leave when they come of age. It needs help, but I still hope it doesn’t become a Virginia Beach or a Nags Head. When I ended up reporting this month’s cover story, I was fascinated to learn that by the very nature of its isolation, the Shore has had time to develop what could be a blueprint for proper economic development without rampant growth. Down in North Carolina, they tried comprehensive coastal zone planning back in the mid-1970s, and it turned into a disaster.

The protagonist in Virginia is the Nature Conservancy. Rather than simply buying up acres of wilderness and sitting on it, the environmental group is trying a more proactive approach. Its Virginia Coast Reserve project has built a new model of sustainable growth. The group educates residents about what they have to lose from rampant growth and helps empower them to build new cottage industries and force their local political officials to pay attention to ecological issues in zoning cases. It is setting an example by getting into real estate itself and building subdivisions with the environment in mind. John M. Hall, the Coast Reserve’s director since 1984 and an architect of much of the program, says the national office of the Nature Conservancy regards them as experimental "skunk works" where they can develop models for the rest of the country.

I certainly hope so. In late July, USA Today published a disturbing series about how coastal areas are tremendously overbuilt. New beach cottages, resort hotels and housing developments are polluting coastal waters and destroying natural habitat. Many will end up as gigantic insurance bills – paid, in large measure, by taxpayers – because they are being erected on flimsy, hurricane-prone spots. Dare County, N.C., the newspaper reported, grew a whopping 30 percent in the 1990s, making it among the fastest-growing coastal spots in the country. That’s something I hope the Eastern Shore can avoid. With help from the Nature Conservancy, Shore residents might have a brighter economic future, as well.