Planning magazine — January 1995

Taking a Stand on Hallowed Ground

Some Civil War battlefields could soon be history if steps aren't taken to save them.

By Mary Lou Gallagher

Anne Snyder was working late in her home office on September 28 when she heard that she and other preservationists had won the Fourth Battle of Manassas. The Walt Disney Company, she learned, had retreated from its plans to build an American history theme park, housing, shops, and hotels on 3,000 acres located about four miles from the Civil War battlefield.

"I was so happy, elated, incredulous," says Snyder, who lives near the battlefield in Prince William County, Virginia. "I never doubted we would win, but I didn't think we'd win that soon."

Despite their success against this formidable adversary, however, preservationists maintain that this won't be the last skirmish over Civil War battlefields. That's because some hundreds of battlefields, from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, now lie in the path of suburban development.

Americans have always been fascinated by the only war in which they took up arms against each other. Three million Union and Confederate soldiers went to war between 1861 and 1865, and 620,000 died — more than in all of the country's other wars combined. The Civil War moved the U.S. into the modern era. It put an end to slavery and transformed the country from a loose federation of states into a unified nation.

Historians say that development of battlefields defaces hallowed ground and dishonors the memory of the soldiers who fought, died, and in some cases were buried there. James McPherson, author of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize winning history of the war, Battle Cry of Freedom, says battlefields teach us how the land shaped the outcome of the conflict. By walking the woods, hills, and hollows, he has said, one understands the experiences of those who fought there.

Preservation efforts began with the creation of the first military cemeteries immediately after the war. In the 1890s the War Department, at great expense, bought vast tracts of land near cemeteries to create four parks — at Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. Early in this century, however, Congress initiated a new policy. Instead of procuring entire combat areas, the federal government began to strips of land along roads, trench lines and marching paths. Parks at Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania Park in Virginia and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, among others, were established or expanded in this way.

Lawmakers assumed that the remaining parcels would remain rural. As it turned out, that was a faulty assumption, one that has led to many of today's land-use conflicts. The dirt roads used by the armies of the 1860s have become state and interstate highways, and development has marched along those routes provoking clashes over battlefield preservation. Other roads, originally constructed to provide visitor access to battlefield parks, are becoming clogged with commuter traffic.

The Manassas story

The Manassas National Battlefield Part in Northern Virginia, established in 1940 is located about an hour from Washing ton, D.C. Ex-marine Annie Snyder, 74 says she is a veteran of seven campaigns to protect the site in the last four decades. "If we had the Grand Canyon in our county, [the board of supervisors] would want to use it for a sanitary landfill," she scoffs.

Snyder's kitchen wall is lined with plaques, including the Civil War Society's First Annual Anne D. Snyder award, honoring "Stonewall Annie" for her role in what has been dubbed the Third Battle of Manassas. That battle began in 1988, when the Hazel/Peterson Companies of Fairfax, Virginia, announced plans for a 1.2-million-square-foot shopping center on a site that included General Robert E. Lee's headquarters during the Second Battle of Manassas.

Snyder launched the Save the Battlefield Coalition, which gathered more than 80,000 petition signatures and won the backing of several congressional leaders. Congress ultimately approved an expenditure of $ 120 million to buy the 588-acre tract. The park is now authorized to encompass 5,070 acres, of which it owns 4,400 acres. The sites of some related skirmishes are not within the boundary.

To avert other such debacles, Congress in 1991 established the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission. The commission's 1993 report identified 384 principal battles in 25 states. It concluded that a third of the sites of these conflicts have already been lost or are in danger, and two-thirds may be gone by 2001. Only four percent of the principal battlefields are primarily publicly owned and 43 percent are entirely private. The rest are a combination of public and private land. But both Civil War armies attacked, retreated, and tended their wounded across great expanses that remain outside park boundaries.

The commission targeted as top priorities 50 sites that influenced the course of the war or a specific campaign. The commissioners urged local officials to pursue heritage tourism as an alternative means of economic development. They suggested federal tax policy revisions to encourage preservation, and changes in state enabling laws to allow transfer of development rights.

Their report also recommended establishment of an acquisition program with an annual budget of $ 10 million for seven years and a pilot program for preserving privately owned land. A bill to modify tax benefits was introduced in the 103rd Congress, but not acted on. Legislation to implement the remaining recommendations is expected to be introduced this year.

Protection program

The shopping center controversy also prompted the National Park Service to establish the American Battlefield Protection Program in 1990. The program provides funding and technical assistance to national and state park staffs, state and local governments, and nonprofit groups working to save threatened battlefields, including those that are privately owned. In fiscal 1994, the program contributed over $375,000 to 26 projects, and its staff advised groups about funds available under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act to acquire scenic easements and historic sites.

The program initially concentrated on Civil War sites, but last spring the park service staff began a survey of Mexican-American War battlefields. Federal legislation proposing the establishment of a Revolutionary War Commission has been introduced but not acted on.

Congress appropriated $3.5 million to purchase battlefield land in 1994, and $2 million for 1995. Because of the limited funds available for outright land acquisition, however, the battlefield protection program stresses the importance of battlefield sites by incorporating them into the local land-use planning process, says the program's preservation planner Stephen Morris.

Several national organizations that work closely with the National Park Service also buy land, development rights, and easements to save battlefield sites. In 1991, for example, the nonprofit Civil War Trust was organized in Washington, D.C., to raise funds for priority sites. When the U.S. Mint begins selling three types of 1995 Civil War commemorative coins in March, proceeds from the surcharge will be allocated to the trust. The sale of all 3.3 million coins would raise $21.5 million.

Other groups include the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, a land trust in Fredericksburg, Virginia, also founded in 1987; and the Conservation Fund's battlefield campaign, which buys land on its own and for the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

The mouse at Manassas

In November 1993, Disney executives unveiled plans for a Disney's America theme park in Haymarket, Virginia. Prince William County officials welcomed this new proposal as they had the previous one, because it promised 3,000 jobs and $ 12 million annually in additional county tax revenue. Last September, the county planning commission recommended zoning approval for the park, 2,300 housing units, 1,300 hotel rooms, and 1.9 million square feet of offices and shops.

Virginia Gov. George Alien and the state legislature backed the Disney theme park, and lawmakers already had approved a $130 million bond package for road improvements and an interchange that would benefit the project. The legislature was to consider another $30 to $50 million package for signs, sewer, and water this month.

But several organizations launched attacks. The National Trust for Historic Preservation took out full-page ads in several newspapers urging the public to write to Disney chairman Michael Eisner to protest the theme park. Historians David McCullough and Shelby Foote, who appeared in the 1989 Civil War public television documentary, helped form the nonprofit Protect Historic America and spoke to eager audiences around the nation.

The Piedmont Environmental Council, a farmland protection group based in Warrenton, Virginia, filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding traffic analyses and other documents, and threatened to clog the courts with lawsuits until Disney was defeated. Prince William County residents formed Protect PW to voice concerns about traffic, sprawl, pollution, and the costs to taxpayers of the state's incentives.

In the end, Disney executives surrendered, concluding that the national debate over the $650 million project had wounded the company's image. "The controversy over building in Prince William County has diverted attention and resources from the creative development of the park," said Peter Rummel, president of the Disney Design and Development Company, in a press release.

At the Manassas battlefield, park superintendent Kenneth Apschnikat says that development will come, "Disney or not." Meanwhile, he says he will concentrate on obtaining funds to study the impact of closing two roads that run through the park. Commuters sit in gridlocked traffic during rush hours at the intersection of Routes 29 and 234, where they narrow from four lanes to two lanes in the park. Congress's 1988 law authorized the federal government to share the cost of building a bypass that would be needed if the two roads were closed.

Meanwhile, the Disney parcel reverts to previous zoning for a residential planned community of up to 2,800 housing units, 400,000 square feet of commercial space, and 20 to 30 acres of light industrial. Another 100-acre parcel is zoned for rural residential, and 500 acres remain agricultural.

The county's 1991 comprehensive plan allows up to 77 million square feet of nonresidential development and 5,500 housing units in the Manassas-Haymarket-Gainesville triangle, which includes the Disney site. Already on the way: a 21,000-seat outdoor music theater about four miles southeast of the Disney property. While the theme park was still under consideration in July, the county board approved the amphitheater, scheduled to open this May. Some of those music lovers will drive through the battlefield.

The county plan is consistent with the Washington Council of Governments' concept of concentrating development at multimodal transportation nodes, says Richard Lawson, county development services manager. The plan is scheduled for review in 1995, but Lawson says the board is not considering changes because of the Disney controversy.

Adds county planning director Douglas James, AICP: "The board wants more economic development. Residents don't want the highest [property] tax rate in Virginia and they don't want to commute to D.C. We have tools in place to accommodate growth whenever it takes place in an environmentally sensitive manner." County residents already pay the state's highest tax rate, and about 30 percent of employed county residents currently commute to Washington, according to the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission.

The Piedmont Environmental Council, Protect PW, and a dozen other groups were to meet in December to decide where to go from here. Protect Historic America will disband as a formal organization, but its members will work with other groups, says executive director Rudy Abramson. "If we walk away now, it's a hollow victory," he says. "We need to figure out what we can do to encourage responsible development and regional land-use planning."

Many preservationists advocate the promotion of heritage tourism in the county (about 135,000 visitors now tour the park annually). One idea that has been put forward, says Abramson, is the development of a historic corridor linking Manassas and two other battlefields, Antietam and Gettysburg.

Gettysburg under fire

But the combination of tourism and a lack of coordinated planning is a dangerous one. In Gettysburg, for example, fast food restaurants, souvenir shops, motels, and gas stations line streets directly across from the battlefield. A 310-foot observation tower looms over the national cemetery. The park crosses the boundaries of four townships and the borough of Gettysburg, and no single jurisdiction has the authority to implement land-use planning. Development pressure has been increasing, fed by the growing Baltimore-Washington megalopolis.

Tourism run rampant is probably not what Congress had in mind when in 1895 it created a national military park on several thousand of the battle's 20,000 acres. Today the park encompasses 5,733 acres, of which the National Park Service owns about 4,000. Veterans began to visit the site soon after the Civil War, and some 1.3 million visitors now descend on the battlefield each year.

But the residents of largely rural Adams County, where the park is located, maintain a love-hate relationship with the site. Although many residents depend on tourism for their livelihood, they resent the limitations it imposes on development. The borough of Gettysburg, for example, is surrounded by the park and has no other land on which to expand. With only two major industries, one with low-paying service jobs (Adams County ranked 56 out of 67 Pennsylvania counties in average annual wages in 1989), officials have been eager to attract more businesses.

Gettysburg has been under siege from developers since 1990, when U.S. Route 15 was widened to four lanes, bringing a Wal-Mart and other projects, including the Adams Commerce Center, a business park on county-owned land that could also be the site for the county's solid waste disposal facility, and the Shoppes at Gettysburg, a 300,000-square-foot shopping center.

Route 15 has become a major commuter route between Harrisburg, about 35 miles north, and Frederick, Maryland; and between Harrisburg and Washington. The commuter population is expected to grow when a commuter rail line from Washington is extended to Frederick in the next few years.

Also, although the county now has four planners, its comprehensive plans are not binding on the townships. The townships have no professional planning staffs and most have only recently embraced planning or zoning.

"The park and related resources would be better protected if the county had land-use authority," says Kent Schwarzkopf, park resource planner. In fact, the state legislature is considering a bill that would give Pennsylvania counties authority over larger projects.

Meanwhile, Congress in 1990 passed legislation defining a permanent park boundary, something the original law had neglected to do. The new law expanded the park by 1,897 acres, although it authorized the purchase of only 200 acres within that boundary. Purchases of the rest of the land, which is now privately owned, are limited to easements.

The law also put some teeth into the existing historic district regulations. Any project that gets federal funds or requires a federal permit — about half of proposed projects do, Schwarzkopf says — must now obtain Department of Interior approval and agree to minimize the impact on historic resources. In addition, funds are available to encourage conservation in the 11,000-acre National Register historic district. About $100,000 was distributed to local jurisdictions and landowners last year. Schwarzkopf, who was hired in 1991 to implement the new legislation, reviewed Straban Township's zoning ordinance two years ago, commented on the 1991 Adams County comprehensive plan, and is now reviewing Freedom Township's ordinance.

The road to Glorieta

If Gettysburg has been a victim of too much public attention, Glorieta Pass may be the victim of too little. Many people are surprised to learn that a crucial Civil War battle took place in the Southwest near Glorieta Pass, a notch in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains about 15 miles south east of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It was not until 1987, when a local property owner discovered the remains of Confederate soldiers on his land, that the site attracted national attention. Three years later, Congress established the Glorieta Unit of the Pecos National Historical Park, which is not yet open to the public. The unit consists of 682 acres in two subunits where fighting took place at Pigeon's Ranch and at a ridge called Canoncito; just under 500 acres remain in private hands. Another 450 acres, considered significant to the battle, are not within the boundary.

The greatest current threat to the site comes not from private development however, but from a public works project Construction has already begun on the $4.6 million realigning and widening of state Route 50 from the park's eastern boundary to the village of Pecos, 4.3 miles to the east. Jointly funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the New Mexico Department of Transportation, the road will serve the increasing number of people who are commuting from Pecos to Santa Fe.

The plans call for widening the road's two 11-foot lanes to 12 feet, and adding two eight-foot shoulders. Originally the road was to be widened through the 345- acre Pigeon's Ranch site. The one remaining adobe ranch building sits only inches from the road. Project planning had reached the final public comment phase when the battlefield became par of the National Park Service.

Widening the road through the park would have a serious impact on that historic site, according to park superintendent Linda Stoll. "It would destroy significant portions of the battlefield."

Park service staff propose an alternative: building an interchange below the battlefield and closing the section of the road that runs through it. Park service and state historic preservation office staff requested a feasibility study of this option. A consultant was hired in May 1993 and an environmental impact study is under way. Meanwhile, the bulldozers are still headed in that direction.

Mary Lou Gallagher is Planning's associate editor.