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Most Endangered Battlefields 2008
Progress Report

2007 Preservation Successes
In partnership with several national and local preservation groups, CWPT
has been working tirelessly to save historic properties at endangered sites
identified in previous editions of History Under Siege. Listed below are a few
of the successes achieved by CWPT and its partners in the past year.

Champion Hill
Unique preservation strategies allowed CWPT to protect 144 acres at the very
heart of the Champion Hill battlefield in 2007. This key portion of the field is
still owned by the Champion family, for whom the area and the battle were named, but now is also under conservation easement. This means that the Champions maintain ownership of the historic land they have been careful stewards of for generations, while ensuring that their intentions of seeing it protected are realized in perpetuity.

Chattahoochee River Line
Cobb County officials, working with the Georgia Battlefields Association,
have made considerable progress toward protecting the embattled
fortifications of Johnson’s River Line. By working creatively with a developer,
they ensured that two of the remaining Confederate fortifications (unique
structures known as Shoupades) and the land connecting them are preserved
as a county park. Interpretive signs and a walking trail were installed in
September 2007. Meanwhile, in July the county approved nearly $2.5 million
for the purchase of 15.45 acres containing remnants of the opposing federal
line for a second county park.

Glendale
While the Richmond, Va., suburbs remain a hotbed for development, CWPT has made remarkable strides at Glendale, preserving 319 acres in just one year and 566 acres overall. Once visitors could scarcely find a roadside pulloff to contemplate the fighting, but now fully 75 percent of the battlefield is preserved.
When combined with previous efforts at nearby Malvern Hill, CWPT has now created a three mile-long continuous corridor of protected battlefield.

Harpers Ferry
In August 2006 a group of unscrupulous developers bulldozed a portion of battlefield at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park and, without authorization or
permit, laid 1,900 feet of water and sewer pipe to feed their planned development nearby. Over the next year, their plans for rezoning were stymied at every turn by local government officials, supported by national and local preservation groups. In the fall of 2007, local officials and preservationists engaged a new development firm, which is committed to using the land to improve the visitor experience at the park and preserve viewshed.

New Orleans
Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans with a vengeance in August 2005, doing immense damage to the region’s historic resources, including the Civil War-era forts that defended the city. Following extensive repair and rehabilitation, Fort Pike State Historic Site reopened to the public in February 2008. Forts Jackson and St. Philip in Plaquemines Parish, however, remain shuttered.

Wilderness
Activists looking to protect this Orange County, Va., battlefield had much to celebrate in 2007. In January, the County Board of Supervisors added language to its Comprehensive Plan that quashed developers’ hopes of widening State Route 20 to four lanes through the heart of the battlefield. Then both the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors voted unanimously against a rezoning proposal that would have allowed 443,500 gross square feet of commercial space within the boundary of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The banner year culminated in December, with the Park Service purchasing a 63-acre tract of battlefield that had once been slated for construction.

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