Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park To Buy 34 Acres
By Joe Kirby
September 2005
KENNESAW, Ga. — Thirty-four acres of unspoiled pasture and forest, complete with trenches and breastworks, will be added to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park as a result of the passage by Congress in late July of a $286 billion national highway funding bill.
One of the bill’s smaller appropriations is $3 million to add the land at Kennesaw Mountain. The land will be sold to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which in turn will eventually convey it to the National Park Service.
The seller is retired engineer and state representative Sam Hensley, who owns about 70 acres contiguous to the park. He intends to divide the remaining acreage among his three children.
"Before my wife died two years ago, we talked about what we’d like to do with the property, and my kids were involved in the discussion, too. We didn’t want to see it carved into subdivision lots. So we tried to devise a way to preserve it," he said.
The tract is completely within one of several large "islands" of non-NPS land within the park’s boundaries. The acquisition will represent the largest addition to the park since the late 1940s, when Congress’ original appropriation for land buying for the park was used up.
The Hensleys have agreed to sell the land for $3.6 million to the Trust, with local authorities and groups expected to come up with the $600,000 not covered by the congressional appropriation.
"We’ve done a bargain sale at roughly half the current market prices," Hensley said.
Land bordering the park has been steadily escalating in price in recent decades, and prices soared in the 2000s. Numerous homes in the $1 million-plus range have been built on the park’s borders. A subdivision under construction bordering the Marietta side of the boundary features mansions with price tags nearing $10 million.
Hensley said that he had been receiving an average of an offer a month for his land from developers in recent years, but had turned them all down.
The Hensley tract is in the northwestern portion of the park, just north of where Union Gen. George H. Thomas’ Army of the Cumberland launched its ill-fated attack on Pigeon Hill in 1864.
The Hensley property flanks the remains of a 24-gun Union battery facing the mountain. And unlike many who owned property near the park, Hensley has never allowed relic hunters to dig on his property, helping preserve its pristine nature.
“This opportunity to save historic earthworks at a battlefield is of the highest importance,” said Lloyd Morris, chief ranger at the park.
The portion of Hensley's land that his family is retaining will not be conducive to ever being developed, Sam Hensley said.
"We’re retaining only a 20-foot-wide strip for a little road back to our property, so essentially, it will be landlocked," he said. "There won’t be any way you could ever put a road back there for a subdivision."
The Hensleys bought the property in 1957 when Old Mountain Road was still unpaved.
"It used to be that when a car would go by we’d wonder which neighbor it was," he said. "Now, there’s so much traffic you can hardly get out of the driveway."
Hensley is the father of actor Shuler Hensley, who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway revival of "Oklahoma" and who splits his time between New York City and the family property.
"My son’s favorite prediction," said the elder Hensley, "has always been that someday Kennesaw Mountain park will be like Central Park, a green oasis in the middle of an urban area. And that’s happening much faster than we ever thought it would."
