Road To Bisect Wilderness Battlefield?
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Jan. 4, 2007
Wilderness National Battlefield, Virginia
Credit: Brian Wolfe
UPDATE: Orange County's board of supervisors abandoned plans to expand the road through Wilderness National Battlefield.
A four-lane highway through a Civil War battlefield and national park? It sounds impossible, but next week Orange County's board of supervisors will consider a new road through Wilderness National Battlefield in Virginia.
"The road would bisect some of the most fought-over ground in America," says Jim Campi, spokesman for the Civil War Preservation Trust, which has formed an alliance with the National Trust's Southern Field Office and other groups to urge people to voice their opposition to the new road to the state department of transportation and the board of supervisors.
Virginia's department of transportation recommended that Route 20 be realigned through the park in a study that is already part of the county's master plan. At a Jan. 9 meeting, however, the board will consider adopting the county planning commission's addition to the plan, which conveys the county's intent to "discourage development" in the park.
"The planning commission says they want to avoid that [development]. We are hopeful that the board will adopt the planning commission's language," says Dan Holmes, the Piedmont Environmental Council's Orange County field officer.
The county doesn't have the authority to build a road through a national park, says Russ Smith, superintendent of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania County National Military Park, which includes Wilderness. "I couldn't say yes to [the road] even if I wanted to," Smith says. "It would take Congressional action."
But that's exactly what happened in New Mexico. Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez authorized a six-lane highway through Petroglyph National Monument, which contains 20,000 petroglyphs, some 3,000 years old. The city then persuaded Congress to remove eight-and-a-half acres from the national park so that the Paseo del Norte could be built. Still under construction, the road is about 85 percent complete.
The Battle of the Wilderness took place on May 5 and 6 in 1864. The park's visitors center received about 25,000 visitors last year, according to Smith.
Even if the board adopts the park-friendly language next week, more development has been proposed both within and just outside Wilderness National Battlefield. In July 2006 Virginia-based developers Kenny Dotson and Charles King III filed an application to re-zone 176.5 acres within the Congressional boundary for shops, office buildings, and a hotel. The same developers also wish to convert another 2,000 acres for industrial and residential use, just across from the Battlefield. "That's still looming over us," Holmes says.
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