Jacob Stoltzfus clutched his straw hat in his hand and said what he'd traveled some 85 miles to say.

"The idea of a new Route 23 is totally unacceptable."

U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts thanked Stoltzfus for his input and noted that he had heard such sentiments before.

But Lancaster County Plain Sect farmers do not often journey to Capitol Hill to express them.

Three Old Order Amishmen did just that Thursday.

The Washington, D.C. excursion included meetings with Pitts and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., who could vote on "goat path" corridor funding should the project be approved.

Both  advised their Amish constituents to remain involved in the discussion.

"This is a big battle," Casey said to the group sitting in a circle in his office. "The closer it gets [to a resolution] the tougher it will be."

The Conestoga Valley Coalition citizens group sponsored last week's day trip to reinforce that urgency.

"Most of the municipalities around the goat path are thinking of this as something to help drive development" that could scatter the Amish and spoil a renowned landscape, said CVC attorney Jim Tupitza.

Geoffery B. McCullough, a Boston attorney and former Washington staffer for the late Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson,  accompanied Tupitza and the Amishmen to the capital.

"Lancaster County is a national treasure," agreed McCullough, who said he grew to appreciate the community through his wife, Signe.

The impact of a goat path resurrection would ripple far beyond county borders, cautions the couple, who are both involved with the farmland preservation effort here.  

Road improvement proposals will remain under scrutiny for at least several more months as Harrisburg prepares an environmental impact statement and schedules public meetings, probably in the fall.

Stoltzfus knows the flight plan.

"I've been following this thing for 40 years, 41 actually," he told Casey. "I've attended more meetings than you can shake a stick at ... I think we're at a crossroads now."

Goat pathology
Debate over the goat path has continued sporadically for more than 40 years.

"About every 10 years it comes to life again," said Stoltzfus, who went to Washington with David Lapp and Amish minister John Smucker, (not their real names).

All three men live in the vicinity of the 14-mile corridor from Lancaster to New Holland.

Thursday was a significant departure from routine.

Smucker said he had turned out 2,000 bales of hay since Saturday.

When praised for his cabinet-making skill, Lapp smiled modestly and allowed that he had created "lots of sawdust."

Lapp, who said he last visited Washington "about 1964," recalled how his parents moved their house out of the bypass right-of-way excavated in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, then-Gov. Bob Casey Sr. halted the project after Amish protests.

The roadbed was reseeded and has been used for pasture ever since.

Alternatives now on the table include converting the path to a two-lane bypass, extending a southern bypass to Blue Ball or doing nothing.

Pitts, who directed federal dollars toward a road study, has said he is holding off taking a stand on the proposals until the end of the public comment period.

"I think what they're trying to do is develop a community consensus," he told the Amish.

Casey emphatically reinforced the position of his late father.

"I went on the record years ago," he said Thursday. "I'm against it."

Tupitza said the Conestoga Valley Coalition values face time with public officials regardless of their goat path leanings.

"You don't necessarily get someone to take your position on day one," he said.

On June 14, the group hosted state Sen. Mike Brubaker and Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry President Tom Baldrige at the East Lampeter Township farm of McCullough's in-laws, Cary and Nellie Ahl.

At that event, also attended by Lapp and Smucker, the Amishmen noted that a new road would shatter the peace of the countryside.

The discussion continued on a clear, sunny day last week when McCullough, the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, collected Tupitza and the Amish trio and shuttled them to Washington in his Chevrolet Suburban.

They arrived in the capital early, proceeded through a series of metal detectors — Stoltzfus good-naturedly removing his shoes at one point — and rehearsed what they'd say.

Continuing through underground hallways, they rendezvoused with Pitts in a bustling Rayburn House Office Building hallway at midday.

Smucker handed the congressman a petition signed by about 100 people who oppose a new road.

The men also conveyed their concern that the lack of an agricultural security district in East Lampeter Township leaves the door open to developers.

"They tell us the current zoning would prevent anything from happening," Stoltzfus said, but zoning regulations can quickly change with a shift in the political wind. "We need something better."

Tupitza noted that Chester County, where Pitts lives, sometimes uses traffic roundabouts to ease vehicle congestion.

"I'm not sure that's the answer," responded the congressman, who was working on amendments to two bills Thursday and met with the Amish on short notice. "But it's one proposal instead of [traffic] lights."

After leaving Pitts and his chief of staff, Gabe Neville, the men strolled beneath ornate vaulted ceilings and historical-themed paintings during a guided tour of the capitol rotunda.

They briefly sat in on a House Gallery session, craned their necks to see the top of the capitol dome some 180 feet up and remarked over a possible Barack Obama sighting.

Lunch followed, in the U.S. Senate Restaurant.

While eating — pizza was a popular entree — the men chatted with Casey's chief of staff, James W. Brown, and his project and appropriations assistant, Ed Williams.

People traditionally see construction and development as the ultimate land uses, Tupitza told them.

But if a property zoned for agriculture is being farmed, he contended,  it is fully developed.

The men also brought up the idea, which they said was once promoted by the late Robert Rodale of Rodale Press Inc., of forming a national park here.

That effort has never gotten off the ground, as Stoltzfus remarked earlier. "The local legislators need to push this, and that's where we stall."

The nature of it
Several elevator rides later, the Old Order lobbyists walked into Casey's headquarters in the Russell Senate Office Building and sat in a ring as sunlight streamed through Venetian window blinds.

Matt Kelly, a legislative aide from Sen. Arlen Specter's staff, monitored  the meeting.

"They don't want this road to be built through the middle of their community," Tupitza said.

"I agree, by the way," said Casey, who had previously met Lapp and Smucker in Lancaster County and asked about their families.

"I'm not an anti-road project guy," he added, noting his support for the Monongahela-Fayette expressway project in western Pennsylvania, "but this is different.

Gov. Ed Rendell is "the most important player" in the road issue, Casey said.

But he encouraged his visitors to make sure the county commissioners and other local officials also know their position.

He encouraged them to bring environmental groups such as PennFuture into the loop.

And he agreed with the men that development will probably follow on the heels of a new road.

"That's inexorable," he said.  "I think that's the nature of it."

Comparing notes as they exited the capital, the Lancaster men acknowledged that many influential minds have yet to be swayed.

They admitted that it will be tough to find consensus when some people, including some Amish, see good in the road while others don't.

Tupitza saw hope in the fact that Casey, who seemed to be solidly in the Conestoga Valley Coalition camp, is a Democrat, like Rendell.

But political hay notwithstanding, Stoltzfus said, people only borrow the farmland for a short time.

"It's God's soil. It's something we need to pass along to the next generation."

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Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News.  His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.