Monday, January 24, 2011
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
In this Aug. 7, 2009 file photo, a gravestone marker on the spot where the arm of General Stonewall Jackson is buried is near the Ellwood house in Locust Grove, Va. Civil War history will play out in a rural Virginia courtroom this week when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. defends a planned store near the hallowed site where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first met on a battlefield in 1864.
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va.
Nearly 150 years after Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant fought in northern Virginia, a conflict over the battlefield is taking shape in a courtroom.
The dispute involves whether a Walmart should be built near the Civil War site, and the case pits preservationists and some residents of a rural northern Virginia town against the world’s largest retailer and local officials who approved the Walmart Supercenter.
Both sides are scheduled to make arguments before a judge Tuesday.
The proposed Walmart is near the site of the Battle of the Wilderness, viewed by historians as a critical turning point in the war. An estimated 185,000 Union and Confederate troops fought over three days in 1864, and 30,000 were killed, injured or went missing. The war ended 11 months later.
The 143,000-square-foot space planned by the Bentonville, Ark., retailer would be outside the limits of the protected national park where the core battlefield is located. The company has stressed the store would be within an area already dotted with retail locations, and in an area zoned for commercial use.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors in August 2009 approved the special use permit Wal-Mart needed to build, but the National Trust for Historic Preservation and residents who live within three miles of the site challenged the board’s decision.
They argued, in part, that supervisors ignored or rejected the help of historians and other preservation experts when they approved the store’s construction in Locust Grove about 1 mile from the national park entrance.
Hundreds of historians, including Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson, filmmaker Ken Burns and actor Robert Duvall have appealed to Wal-Mart to walk away and find another place to build in the county of less than 35,000 people.
An attorney representing Orange County argued the board and other officials acted properly and heard the opinions of hundreds of people before approving the store.
“There is no indication that any significant historical event occurred on this land,” Sharon E. Pandak wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “No state or federal law precludes development of the site.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Robert D. Rosenbaum said he plans to call descendants of Union and Confederate soldiers to testify.
In Orange County, many residents and community leaders have welcomed the Supercenter. It would create 300 jobs and tax revenue.