Stafford Park Gains Almost 16 Acres,
STAFFORD, Va. – A vote on Dec. 14 completed an agreement between three jurisdictions that will enlarge the size of the park preserving a fortified Union Army campsite in Stafford County from 25.4 acres to 41.2 acres, a 62 percent increase. The new land includes an additional camp area, as well. The camp is on land owned by Stafford County and the City of Fredericksburg as part of the regional landfill they jointly manage through the Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board (R-Board). All three jurisdictions must approve major changes to the landfill property. The addition to the park was approved in 2010 by the R-Board on Sept. 15, the Stafford County Board of Supervisors (BOS) on Nov. 30, and the Fredericksburg City Council on Dec. 14. “All of us in the Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites (FSCWS) are very pleased with the recent approvals of the expanded Civil War park boundary,” said FSCWS Director Glenn Trimmer, who thanked the three entities. “We believe this expansion will one day ensure public access to a remarkable collection of Civil War sites.” His group has been behind the push for the park. The park at the fortified encampment site along Accokeek Creek was first established in 2008 and was 25.4 acres (CWN November 2008 and April 2009). Trimmer said, “The original set-aside was simply a carve-out from the R-Board property, but there was no way to get to it [using only public land or roads]. This was not a surprise, we knew we had to do this,” he said. In the future, the park will be accessible from nearby private land in the Mount Hope Estates subdivision in Stafford, which is owned by Sona Homes Inc. and Culpeper Investments LLC, according to Trimmer. “We worked with Sona Homes and then the county to get easements for construction and later for public access,” he said. The new acreage includes more than just a way to access the park. Trimmer said they asked for one additional winter encampment area to be included. “Everyone has been very cooperative and that’s a big thing for us,” said Trimmer, who added that the additional camp area “really does enhance the park.” Cooperation from a major donor, Vulcan Materials Company, a national company with an office in Springfield, Va., has put a big dent in the $800,000 total needed to complete the park, according to Trimmer. While attending a Stafford BOS meeting in 2010, Trimmer and FSCWS President D.P. Newton saw a Vulcan presentation that included comments about how community-oriented they are. Trimmer and Newton later met with Vulcan area sales manager Kip Addison and discussed some ways Vulcan could help the FSCWS. In August Vulcan said it would donate 5,000 tons of gravel products, which Trimmer said is worth $85,000 to $100,000. “That’s all the stone that’s estimated to be needed for our road. Not the asphalt, but all the stone. The road is the major aspect of this park — everything else is already there. The road just connects the pieces,” Trimmer said. “The neatest thing about this park is that you have such a wide variety of fairly unique Civil War sites in a very compact area of 42 acres,” according to Trimmer. “You can walk every key site in that park in two hours.” Trimmer said the two most important things about the park are that it represents the story of the Union Army’s winter encampments in Stafford during the winter of 1862-63, “a story that hasn’t been told,” and it will be accessible to the public. Trimmer said he and FSCWS President D.P. Newton do not believe in preservation for preservation’s sake alone. Some in the historic preservation community have told them they think the park should be studied by historians and archaeologists for up to 30 years before it is opened to the public. That is not the FSCWS philosophy. Getting funding from well-known historic preservation groups like the national Civil War Preservation Trust and local Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, however, has been difficult because of their focus on purchasing land where battles were actually fought and blood spilled. Trimmer said the fortifications and camp sites in the Stafford Civil War Park the FSCWS wants to preserve don’t neatly fit the hallowed ground definition. This bothers Trimmer, “because it seems like the only thing that can make ground hallowed is death in combat.” “Ninetysome percent of soldiers’ time was not spent in battle, it was spent in places like we’re trying to make available to the public,” he said. “It’s not just an empty piece of ground: it’s got their roads, their fortifications, their encampment – and it’s visible,” he said. “In Stafford County, just short of 3,000 soldiers were disinterred by the Union graves commission after the Civil War. You tell me 3,000 soldiers can die in Stafford County [encampments] and the ground’s not hallowed?” Trimmer asks. For information and to make donations go to www.fscws.org
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