Fauquier Museum To Expand Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page LZ11 Washington Post The Fauquier County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 on Monday night to allocate $1.9 million from surplus funds to the tiny Monroe Park gold museum in Goldvein. The museum in south Fauquier plans to use the money to build a re-creation of a 19th-century miners camp on its 14-acre site, with a dynamite shed, bunkhouse and stream in which visitors can pan for gold. Supervisors who supported the allocation said the expansion was long overdue for the museum, which opened off Route 17 in 1998 and has had only one building with displays and two hornet balls -- seven-ton concrete tools used for crushing ore -- sitting out front. A few residents spoke against the expansion, calling it an extravagance. "The residents I have talked to are far more concerned about funding for our schools and for public safety," said Sheryl Wolfe, a member of school Superintendent J. David Martin's advisory committee. The museum, named for the late Henry Patton Monroe, the town's longtime postmaster who donated the land, tells of southern Fauquier in the early 1800s when it was one of the country's most popular mining sites. Hobbyists still come to the area to pan for gold along the nearby Rappahannock River and Deep Run Creek. -- Ian Shapira © 2003 The Washington Post Company