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| Revealed: At the Battle of Gettysburg site, 576 acres of trees once hid the story of July 3, 1863. Gaas/AP |
Civil War buffs couldn't see history for the trees
National parks clear trees from original battlefield 'sight lines,' delighting (and appalling) students of history.
from the April 23, 2008 edition
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Mr. Barger, the park service regional director, says battlefield restoration allows visitors to fully understand moments of history. At Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee, for instance, a cotton field still stands where it did at the end of 1862. "There are records about the cotton flying in the air because of all the bullets going every which way," Barger says. "It's part of telling the story to say, 'That's where it was,' and there it is."
Critics say, 'get rid of' all modernity, then
But critics of the Gettysburg project are unimpressed and have made their views known in letters to the editor and online comments. "If you're a true preservationist, then all the monuments and access roads need to go because they weren't there in 1863," wrote a Gettysburg native to an Illinois paper. "For that matter, most of the population, infrastructure, and business wasn't there either. If you are a true preservationist, then get rid of it all."
Barger acknowledges that cutting down trees seems an unusual thing for the park service to do. "It is one of those things which seems like a contradiction at first, but only if you have a narrow scope of what the national park system protects."
The park service preserves history in addition to nature, Barger says. Indeed, 60 percent of sites preserved by the park service are historic, not natural treasures such as Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, he says.
More battlefields will be spiffed up themselves as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches in 2011, and controversies over restoration projects may be inevitable. A debate is already under way at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi, where Union and Confederate troops battled over access to the Mississippi River.
Under one proposal, the park would cut down stands of oak and hickory trees to allow visitors to better understand the Confederate defenses.
The key to battlefield rehabilitation, Barger says, is to create spots where visitors can "almost feel the bullets."
"That," he says, "is what you want to have happen in a battlefield."
At historic sites, looking forward while looking back
Several U.S. historic sites are being given new looks. A few notable examples:
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