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Outlet eyed near Civil War battlefield

Historians up in arms

By Gary Emerling (Contact) | Saturday, December 27, 2008

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It's the Battle of Bookworms vs. the Big Box.

Preservationists and prominent historians are waging a dogged campaign against a proposed 138,000-square-foot Wal-Mart supercenter next to the Civil War's Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County, Va.

"No one has a deeper, more abiding respect for all that this ground symbolizes than the men and women who make it their lives' work to study historic sites and events," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History. "And clearly, they understand the irreparable damage that this would do to a tangible piece of our history."

The controversy - the latest between battlefield preservationists across the country and those wanting to develop on or next to them - intensified this month when Wal-Mart filed a formal application with Orange County to build the supercenter on a roughly 50-acre site.

The request prompted a letter signed by 253 historians asking the Arkansas-based corporation to "respect our great nation's history and move your store farther away from this historic site and National Park."

The historians - which include Emmy-winning documentarian Ken Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors David M. McCullough and James McPherson, and college professors - say the store would lead to increased traffic and development that would "spoil the battlefield."

They also say only 20 percent of the battlefield is protected by the National Park Service, and building the supercenter would undermine efforts to preserve more of the land.

"This wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved," says the letter, addressed to Wal-Mart President and Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott and coordinated by the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition. "Surely Wal-Mart can identify a site that would meet its needs without changing the very character of the battlefield."

Wal-Mart's proposal involves a location not within National Park Service boundaries, but within the historical boundary of the battlefield, said officials with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

In Western Maryland, developers want to put up a 120-foot-tall cell phone tower at the site of the Battle of Antietam, according to a report in March by the Civil War Preservation Trust.