Fredericksburg Farm Is For Sale; Preservationists Want To Save It

By Kathryn Jorgensen

Feb/Mar 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pierson Farm, 206 acres of core battlefield from the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, is up for sale. The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT) wants it saved. The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) wants it saved.

All that’s stopping them is the $12.3 million asking price.

The tract abuts National Park Service land, but is not within the boundaries of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. It lies between Shannon Airport and an industrial park.

However, CWPT spokesman Jim Campi says the farm is one of the Trust’s top priorities in the country. “Probably more people became casualties on this property than almost any other unprotected parcel you can think of that can still be preserved,” he says.

Unlike the fighting at Marye’s Heights in nearby Fredericksburg “it was not a one-sided affair.” Both sides took heavy casualties, at least 2,500 total.

The Union Army couldn’t break the Marye’s Heights line, but Campi says, “If there was an opportunity for them to win the battle of Fredericksburg it would have been here [Pierson Farm].”

The property was known as the Slaughter Pen Farm during the war. Traces of a Civil War-era stage road are still visible at the front along Route 2.

According to Campi the farm is zoned for light industrial and cannot be subdivided without rezoning. “There is almost no interest among local elected officials to do anything that would make this property more likely to be developed,” he says.

Back in 1997 the farm almost became an auto auction and was saved from that fate when the business bought a different property, Campi says. CVPT talked to the owner for years and CWPT for more than two years. Then last year the county considered putting an elementary school there.

Public clamor from people who wanted to preserve the tract “convinced them it was a bad idea,” says Campi. Some of the clamor came from the Spotsylvania Battlefields Coalition, the successor to the Coalition to Save Chancellorsville Battlefield.

Longtime farm owner John Pierson died Sept. 1 and a niece, Jane Benner, inherited it. CWPT started dealing directly with her about the possibility of buying the land.

Then in December the real estate company that handled the property in 1997 listed it as the “Pierson Industrial Tract.” And, according to Weichert Realty’s Web listing, “The Property is shown by appointment only with Alex Long” and trespassers will be prosecuted.

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported that Long called the preservation groups’ offer “deficient” and “insufficient.”

Long told the newspaper: "In all honesty, we'll try to work with them, but cooperation is a two-way street. If it becomes shrill and nasty on the other side, that cooperation can be taken off the table as easily as it was put on the table. In the final analysis, it's a balancing of interests."

Campi explains why this last undeveloped parcel is so critical:

“Almost all of the battlefield south of Marye’s Heights has been zoned industrial and has been developed.” There is no way to get from where Union troops began their attack to where on Jackson’s line formed. “You just cannot walk that.” But you could if the Pierson Farm is preserved.