Civil War News
Public
to get say on Wal-Mart near Civil War battlefield
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 21, 2009
Wal-Mart's plan to build a Supercenter near a Civil War battlefield has generated nearly 2,000 e-mails to supervisors in this rural county from around the U.S. and as far away as Australia.
Most of those e-mails have encouraged local leaders to reject the 138,000 square foot store planned within a cannonball shot of the Wilderness Battlefield, which was an especially brutal and critical chapter in the war.
Thursday night, hundreds of the estimated 32,000 people who call Orange County home are expected to attend a public hearing on the matter, and many are expected to tell planners they have no beef with Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The Planning Commission is not expected to vote immediately after the hearing on the special permit Wal-Mart will need to build. Planners will ultimately make a recommendation to county supervisors, who will have the final say.
As it stands now, a majority of supervisors favor the store in a split that some say reflects the county's residents.
County administrator William C. Rolfe puts the split among residents at roughly 60-40 in favor of Wal-Mart. He said that point of view has been "overshadowed by outside pressures."
Rolfe and other officials said residents are mindful of the $500,000 in annual tax revenue the store is expected to generate, as well as 300 jobs.
Led by the Civil War Preservation Trust, the Wal-Mart proposal has stirred an outcry perhaps matching the stir created in 1994 when The Walt Disney Co. proposed a $650 million theme park within miles of the Manassas Battlefield. Preservationists won that battle.
More than 250 historians have written to Wal-Mart urging the retailer to select a different location for a store in Orange County, which is approximately 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.
Historians have a special reverence for the Wilderness because it was the first battlefield encounter between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee — two towering figures in the war — in a May 1864 battle that hastened the South's fall.
In a filing with the Planning Commission, the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote that the Wal-Mart "would irrevocably harm the battlefield and National Park."
Only 21 percent of the battlefield is permanently protected.
Wal-Mart has argued that it has revised its plans to make the store as inconspicuous as possible with landscaping and other measures. It also notes that the area along Route 3 already has its share of commercial development, including a McDonald's and strip malls.
The 29,000 deaths and injuries during the clash of North and South armies 145 years is the primary reason historians cite in opposing the store.
"The Wilderness Battlefield is a living memorial to American sacrifice and heroism," historian James McPherson wrote on the anniversary of the battle this month.
While mildly annoyed by what he calls an orchestrated e-mail campaign by opponents, Supervisor Lee H. Frame said he understands the passion the dispute has inspired. Some e-mails have come from people whose descendants fought at Wilderness.
But Frame said residents know what's at stake.
"The Wilderness Battlefield is an important national asset," he said.
Frame, who chairs the Board of Supervisors, said he'll keep that in mind when the proposal reaches his board.