No Word Yet On Fed Response To Developer's Harpers Ferry Digging

By Deborah Fitts

HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. — Officials at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park bided their time in September, awaiting a response from the U.S. Justice Department to the dramatic incursion in August by developers who dug nearly 2,000 feet through park property. (See October CWN)

Park Superintendent Don Campbell said he had received no word from federal prosecutors in reaction to the digging, which he described as “clearly a violation of federal law.”

The three local developers, who are seeking to develop four properties in and around the park, laid sewer and water lines through the park’s 38-acre Perry Orchard tract. on the weekend of Aug. 19 and 20.

The park’s only action in the wake of the incident, Campbell said, was to erect snow fencing across the 45-foot-wide ends of the long trenched strip.

“When the developers left, essentially the area was open to relic-hunters, four-wheel terrain vehicles or anybody else who wanted to drive on it,” Campbell said. “We wanted to close it off to make sure we didn’t get any other disturbance.” The fencing bears federal boundary signs.

As to park supporters who have questioned why the developers weren’t arrested on the spot, Campbell noted that they had a right to be on the property because of an easement.

“It was not a straight trespass,” he explained. “If it was, they would have been arrested.” The easement represented a sufficiently complicating factor, he indicated, so that the larger question of the right to dig was turned over to the Justice Department.

Campbell said that although nothing has been heard regarding the federal reaction to the digging, he had seen “several dozen” e-mails directed to the Interior Department from the public.

“Generally they express an outrage or grave concern about what has occurred at Harpers Ferry,” he said. “They generally carry the message that individuals responsible for this destruction of battlefield property should be prosecuted.”

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT), which helped buy the tract last year, didn’t have to wait for bureaucratic wheels to turn.

President James Lighthizer sent members an “emergency alert” dated Sept. 22, with photos of the trench digging, a map and letter. An enclosed Citizens’ National Petition to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne urges him “to use the full power of your office and authority to see that this matter is completely and thoroughly investigated and, if punishment is warranted, that these reckless developers are prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.”

Lighthizer’s letter urged CWPT members to circulate the petition. “I want to create a tidal wave of national protest over what these people have done,” he wrote. “If they simply get a slap on the wrist, it may mean open season on battlefield parks all across the nation.”