At Gettysburg, a new battle: urban sprawl

A new list of 'endangered battlefields' reveals tensions between preservationists and developers.

from the August 24, 2007 edition

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Driving through Gettysburg, the park unfolds as a patchwork of public and private land. It's the most popular of the country's military parks, with nearly 2 million visitors each year. Yet in a head-spinning equation, only about 80 percent of its 6,000 acres are under Park Service protection. The rest is privately held, its use, in part, up to the discretion of its owners.

Just as troublesome to preservationists is the property beyond the official park boundary. "We have a hard enough time trying to protect what's in the boundaries without even worrying about what's outside," says Jim Johnson, Gettysburg's acting superintendent.

Yet much of that outlying property – such as the Baltimore Pike, a strip of land southeast of Gettysburg dotted with battlegrounds and field hospitals – is of historical consequence. It's also essential to maintaining the integrity of the viewshed. Preservationists worry that instead of cotton-puff clouds, the Gettysburg vistas will be crowded with housing developments.

The movement to preserve Civil War battlefields took hold in the late 1980s with the formation of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites. In 1999, it merged with another organization to form the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT), which today has 70,000 members.

Not everyone is an enthusiastic conservationist, however. Once land comes under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, it's off the tax roll – which can be burdensome for cash-strapped towns.

But the movement is proud of its successes. The CWPT says it has helped save more than 24,000 acres in 18 states. In fact, despite the work left to be done, Professor McPherson says American Civil War sites "may be the best preserved series of battlefields anywhere in the world."

"Europeans who come here are astonished by how much battlefield land has been preserved in the national park system," he says.

For Steve Braden, a visitor from Georgia here with his family, that can only be a good thing.

"To me this is as close as you get to sacred or hallowed ground in America," he says, wearing a baseball cap with the CWPT acronym. He is a member, visiting this battlefield for the first time since his college days in the 1970s.

To view "History Under Siege: A Guide to America's Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields," visit www.civilwar.org/news/topten2007/index.htm.

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