Preservation News: Victories Announced By Central Virginia Battlefield Trust

Earlier this week, Central Virginia Battlefield Trust announced four new preservation successes! Here are the details:

1. “Parcel 1” At Fredericksburg Battlefield

Artillery lunette occupied by the Norfolk Artillery during the battle of Fredericksburg December 13, 1862.

2. “Parcel 2” at The Crossroads

The American Battlefield Trust’s 300-plus acre Chancellorsville-Wilderness Crossroads project—CVBT provided a $50,000 contribution to seed its pool of matching funds.

3. “Parcel 3” at Wilderness Battlefield

Hill-Ewell Drive is the principal route through the national park in the Wilderness battlefield. To that end, CVBT has begun an initiative to acquire vacant lots at the end of residential cul de sacs, thereby expanding the de facto buffer between the most-traveled thoroughfares of the park and the modern structures that threaten their historic integrity.

4. The Kinney Tract on Chancellorsville Battlefield

The David B. Kinney tract is situated at the intersection of Plank Road and Orange Plank Road, directly across Plank Road from the Hawkins Farm and a stone’s throw from Wilderness Church. It is very near the midpoint of the XI Corps defensive position. XI Corps troops prepared their line along the south side of Plank Road, facing south into the drainage of Lewis Run. The XI Corps headquarters of Major General Oliver Otis Howard was nearby at Dowdall’s Tavern. This 1.1 acre corner parcel adds to our ongoing effort to stitch together the parts of the battlefield on the south side of Plank Road.

Below the Rappahannock River in central Virginia lies some of the most fought-over terrain in America. Between 1861 and 1864 the warring armies of the Civil War bitterly and repeatedly contested these lands. As the midpoint between the Union and Confederate capitols this region was not just strategically important, it was an obsession. Through four major military campaigns and countless skirmishes and small engagements men struggled and died here, for their homes, their beliefs, for the ideals they wanted their country to stand for.

It is the mission of Central Virginia Battlefields Trust to preserve these historic landscapes, these places where so many men of North and South sacrificed, where many gave —in the words of Abraham Lincoln—“the last full measure of devotion.”