Battlefield Grounds Eyed by Developers
A town could be built on land key to the battle of Chancellorsville.
CHANCELLORSVILLE, VA.—The second battle of Chancellorsville has begun.
Nearly 240 years after the first battle, a coalition of preservation groups and citizens is fighting to protect Chancellorsville Battlefield from a proposed 2,350-house residential and commercial development on 788 acres of farmland adjacent to the park's boundary.
Critics say the development would essentially drop a 10,000-
person city at the site of the first day of fighting for one of the Civil War's legendary battles.
"The battlefield's history demands that it become a national park, not an office park," said Joy Oakes, NPCA's Mid-Atlantic regional director.
Chancellorsville Battlefield is one of four major battlefields contained within Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park, located about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C.
Dogwood Development hopes to build a community at Chancellorsville, in which its residents can live, work, shop, and play. Ray Smith, Dogwood's president, has offered to donate $19 million worth of land, including a 34-acre chunk, to mark where the first day of fighting at the battle of Chancellorsville occurred. The company says the development would generate thousands of jobs and $11 million annually for the county.
The sheer size of the development, however, concerns battlefield advocates.
"I don't think there's ever been a project in the park's history that presents such a threat," said John Hennessy, acting superintendent of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania. "No matter where you are at Chancellorsville, there will be an impact. It will be disastrous."
Among many concerns, battlefield advocates point to the developer's estimate that the project would increase traffic on Route 3 from 40,000 to 110,000 cars per day (which could spur calls to widen the road); attract ancillary development, further marring the area's landscape; and degrade the overall visitor experience.
"This development will overwhelm the existing historic park and the whole area," said Jim Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Preservation Trust. "At best, it's ill-advised. At worst, it will be a land-use disaster."
The Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the proposal late this fall, at the earliest. Dogwood is asking the board to rezone the land, allowing a mixed-use development. The land is currently zoned for shops, offices, and up to 225 houses.
"If the land was developed as it is currently zoned, we would still oppose it," said Jim Campi, spokesman for the Civil War Preservation Trust. "But that would not have near the impact of what's being proposed now."
A public opinion poll commissioned by the Coalition to Save Chancellorsville Battlefield, to which NPCA belongs, revealed that 66 percent of polled Spotsylvania County voters oppose the development. Hundreds of preservationists and residents attended a town meeting on the development in late August to express concerns.
"[Residents] have had enough of the haphazard-hyper-growth that's turning their communities into one big strip mall choked with traffic," said Robert Nieweg, Southern field office director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
And sadly, preservationists say, development of all kinds threatens Civil War and other battlefields across the United States. (To view a current list of threats, visit www.npca.org/take_action.)
"Battlefields are America's living classrooms, where history becomes real," said Oakes. "They are also local economic engines that support heritage tourism, year after year. Communities can benefit by protecting the national park in their backyard, or they can regret having let them be developed."
Nearly 200,000 Civil War troops clashed at Chancellorsville from May 1-3, 1863, resulting in 30,000 casualties, including the death of Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. It was one of the largest battles ever waged in North America.
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