Picture this: A Wal-Mart next to a significant Civil War battlefield. The American way?
Preservationists are joining up to fight a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for 55 acres across from the Wilderness Battlefield Park in Orange County, Va.
The park is the site of a two-day battle in 1864 where more than 28,000 Americans died. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee first faced off at the Battle of Wilderness, and the site was named by Congress as one of the most significant of the Civil War. The Wal-Mart would be on land considered within the historic limits of the battlefield.
The National Coalition for History website quotes a spokesman for the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition as saying the proposal is “the wrong project, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
“With four other Wal-Mart stores located less than 20 miles from the Wilderness Battlefield, it is hard to argue there is even a need for such a facility at this location. But what is not in question is that a Wal-Mart Supercenter is entirely inappropriate next to a hallowed battlefield park.”