Kennesaw National Battlefield Park Museum To Open Soon
By Joe Kirby

MARIETTA, Ga. — "Battle fatigue" is a term usually used to describe soldiers who have seen too much combat. Lately, the term also could be used to describe those who have waited patiently for the opening of the long-delayed museum at the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park visitors center.

Believe it or not, it has taken longer to prepare the museum for opening than it did to fight the Civil War. But just as that war finally came to an end, so, too, is the wait for the museum nearing an end.

Park officials are cautiously predicting a mid-November opening. "If it does open in November, it will be exactly 10 years since we started the project to expand the visitors center and the first dollar was donated," said Superintendent John Cissell.

"If anyone had asked me if I thought it would take 10 years, I would have said, 'Heavens, no!' It has been a slow process, no question about it."

The original plan was to have the facility open in time for the 1996 Olympics, but fund-raising took longer than anticipated. "Trying to raise private and public money for a government facility is difficult, especially when you're asking people to donate to a government that come April is going to turn around and tax you," Cissell said.

Eventually $2.5 million was raised by the Friends of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

The first step was to expand and overhaul the overcrowded, outdated visitors center, which opened in 1963. The next step was to replace the creaky old filmstrip shown in the visitors center theater with a 20-minute, state-of-the-art video.

Last on the list, but not least, was upgrading the museum, which had not changed since the day the center opened. Designing the museum exhibits took longer than expected, and then the National Park Service historians up the chain of command had to sign off on them.

Another reason for the deliberate nature of the effort is the attempt to make sure the museum exhibits are as near perfect as possible, because they're likely to be on view for the next 30 or 40 years, just as the original displays were.

The new museum will be more than twice the size of the old one, and will have a broader scope as well. Where the old museum focused just on the battle, the new one will include exhibits about the war as a whole. Included will be displays about Civil War-era medicine, the roles of civilians and slaves, the war on the home front and the battle's impact on Marietta, according to museum curator Retha Stephens.

The exhibits were researched and scripted by University of Georgia historian Dr. David Evans, author of Sherman's Horsemen. Cissell and Stephens were heartened by the arrival of several items in September on long-term loan from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

It ultimately took intervention by U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Smyrna, to pry the items loose from Washington, according to Cissell. The items in question are a Rigdon & Ansley revolver and Cook & Bro. carbine — both manufactured in Georgia, as well as a saber belt.

"We're trying to explain to visitors that the South didn't have as much manufacturing as the North, but they did have it," Stephens said. Such Southern-made weapons now are "as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth," she added.

All the other items to be displayed are now on hand, except for a pair of Confederate flags now being restored at the Park Service's lab at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., that should be here by late fall.

"It's exciting. We really can see the light at the end of the tunnel," Stephens said. The new museum will feature most of the items from the old facility, as well as new items. Many come from the park's collection, others were donated or loaned and a few were purchased.

The surgeon's kit, with its gruesome saws used for amputations, will still be on view, as will be the uniform of Confederate Gen. Samuel French. "It will still be there, but now we'll be able to explain who he was," Ms. Stephens said.

"We’re trying to personalize the exhibits and make them as site-specific as possible. We think there will be a lot of people coming out of the exhibit saying 'Oh, wow!'"