- (December 2006)KENNESAW, Ga. - Peter Popham is on a mission to preserve the Camp McDonald site in downtown Kennesaw. It's all that's left of the 100-acre Camp McDonald State of George Confederate Training Camp that Gov. Joe Brown established in 1861.

Popham says the 10-acre tract is "gorgeous," a pristine wetland with trees and streams. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places for more than 25 years.

But there's a problem - it's slated for development and Popham is fighting his way through court appeals to get someone to put on the brakes. He charges city officials, who approved a certificate of appropriateness on Oct. 18, with ignoring and violating city, state and federal environmental and preservation laws.

Preservationists and historians like Popham see a natural fit for the training ground, making it what he calls a "third jewel," with Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield three miles away and the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History 900 feet away.

Kennesaw officials, whose city hall is next to the site, see it otherwise.

Popham has been fighting with city hall and in court against a plan to build 55 town-homes, a multi-story parking structure and retail space, some of which would be in the Kennesaw Springs floodplain and would intrude on the buffer for the adjoining cemetery which originally was the Camp McDonald cemetery.

The site's four springs still flow to Lake Acworth and Lake Allatoona, providing the region with drinking water. Popham says that unmarked graves and Indian graves and relics remain on the site.

Camp McDonald housed infantry and cavalry training schools. Popham says cadets from Georgia Military Institute in Marietta were drill instructors for 7,000 recruits who became the Georgia Infantry Brigade comprised of the 40th, 41st, 42nd, 43rd and 52nd Infantry Regiments.

Historian Gary Goodson, who has documented the brigade in his "Georgia Confederate 7000"" series of books, says the regiments left Camp McDonald in early spring 1862 for Tennessee.

Many went to Knoxville's Camp Van Dorn where 150 officers and men of the 40th and 52nd regiments died from mumps, measles and dysentery. (After more than 10 years of research Goodson found Camp Van Dorn's site which will receive a Tennessee Historical Commission marker next year.)

By the end of the war roughly 400 men remained in the Georgia Brigade after fighting 17 battles in five states over 5,000 miles, says Popham.

In 2001 a low-price housing development proposal for the Camp McDonald site was thwarted. Author Goodson, former Kennesaw NMP Superintendent John Cissell and an environmental engineer Popham hired to conduct an environmental impact study were among those speaking against it. The mayor, city council, planning commission and historic preservation commission supported the housing.

Popham's October filing for temporary, preliminary and permanent injunction, declaratory judgment and writ of mandamus was denied by the court because he didn't have standing, not being an adjacent property owner.

That galls Popham, a resident of the adjacent Big Shanty Village National and State Historic Districts. His family gave the training camp land to the city. They drew it in an 1832 lottery after the Cherokees were forcibly removed. Popham's Roberts ancestors also contributed the right-of-way for the railroad to come to Kennesaw.

Three or four of his relatives were in the Georgia Brigade. His great-great-grandfather John Stanley Roberts was a Georgia Military Institute cadet who trained at Camp McDonald. He was 16 and was shot twice when Union troops under Gen. W.T. Sherman attacked Kennesaw Mountain.

As Popham warned in a recent letter before September hearings, "If Camp McDonald is further diminished, the site will lose its National Register of Historic Places designation; the Butler Creek Watershed will be further compromised by development erosion and runoff; and the city itself will suffer economic loss of tourist dollars if this site is turned into just another blacktop development, two blocks from the Cobb Parkway Traffic Jam."

For more information contact Popham at peterpophamaatlantausa@netzero.net

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