Recently, a bankruptcy expert told a Bloomberg Radio interviewer that the United States is “over-stored” – it has far too much retail space than is needed to serve American consumers. Amidst the holiday shopping blitz, I thought of this observation as I read this week of the plans by Wal-Mart to construct a new 141,000-square foot store in Virginia very close to the site of one of the most important battlefields of the Civil War. The retail and grocery superstore would be just a quarter-mile from the boundary of the National Park area commemorating the Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War. Is this a good place for a Wal-Mart? Does it need to be built there?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Civil War Preservation Trust, others in the historic preservation community, and 253 historians don’t think so. In a letter to Wal-Mart, the historians, who include David McCullough, James McPherson, and Edwin Bearss, the historian emeritus of the National Park Service, maintain this new Wal-Mart will do great damage to a landscape that is a tangible piece of America’s history. As they noted in the letter, “The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved. Surely Wal-Mart can identify a site that would meet its needs without changing the very character of the battlefield.”

The coalition is fighting to stop the Wilderness Wal-Mart by urging the giant retailer to move its proposed store farther from the historic site. The proposal is under consideration at the local level now: Wal-Mart recently filed an application for a special-use permit, which governs larger retail uses in the commercial zone, with the Orange County Department of Community Development in Virginia; the Orange County Planning Commission will next review the application. The supercenter proposal is sure to be another pitched battle in the campaign to preserve those now-peaceful and important places that commemorate and teach about the Civil War.

The Wal-Mart superstore would be on 19 acres of a 50-acre parcel on the northern side of Route 3 near Route 20, according to the Culpeper (Va.) Star-Exponent. This is in close proximity to The Wilderness battlefield portion of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The park preserves and memorializes portions of the battlefields of four of the most critical battles fought during the Civil War.

To the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Civil War Preservation Trust, and others who care about American history, this location is unconscionable. The NTHP says that the big-box store development will degrade the battlefield’s rural setting, promote sprawl, cause vehicle traffic that passes through the National Park to spike upward, and increase pressure to widen Route 20 through the park from two lanes to four.

A Feel for the Experience

Often, supporters of development such as big-box stores and massive, new housing developments characterize these land-use fights as do-gooding outsiders pitted against local residents who need stores, places to live, services, and tax revenues for government. But the situation is rarely this simple. The Wilderness Battlefield, for example, is a major tourist draw for Virginia’s Orange County, as Craig Rains, spokesman for the Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield, told a reporter from the Media General News Service. Wal-Mart already has several other stores in the area. Moreover, once a big-box retailer and its attendant development and congestion become established so near this National Park, will the experience and serenity still hold for the tens of thousands who visit the battlefield and contemplate a landscape largely unchanged since 1864?

The Wilderness, on May 5-7, 1864, was the first battle fought of General Ulysses S. Grant’s grinding Overland Campaign against General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. On this ground, Grant established the pattern that ultimately led to Union victory by 1865: Although his forces sustained a horrific level of casualties in the battle (estimated between 17,000 and 18,000 killed, wounded, and captured or missing), Grant chose to draw back and then resume the offensive in another place to challenge the Confederates. The Confederate casualties numbered somewhere between 7,500 and 11,400, depending on which source one cites.

I’ve been one of those who visited the Wilderness battlefield site, and I can say it leaves an impact after quietly walking the land and thinking about the horror and sacrifice endured by those who fought here. In his book This Hallowed Ground, Bruce Catton captured the harsh, close-up, inhuman battle between the North and the South that occurred in a forest dense with underbrush, small sharp saplings, and bogland. Catton described “the harsh fog of powder smoke trapped under the trees and seeping out as if all the woodland were an immense boiling cauldron.” Lee’s army had mounted a great counterattack against the Union army in the Wilderness, but, as Catton wrote, “it was the last great counterblow the Army of Northern Virginia would ever make.”

As I walked the Wilderness site, I remember wondering how the men there could endure its close, hellish combat and I felt the urgent need anew to promote peace. I thought of how the evil institution of slavery and the unyielding national contest over states’ rights had been at the core of the war but wondered what had been on the minds of those fighting on those days of May for their lives at the Wilderness…their children or other loved ones perhaps?

Ways To Get Involved

It is right near such a historic place that Wal-Mart proposes to build one of its gigantic superstores. As the National Trust for Historic Preservation says, “You can buy a lot of things at Wal-Mart, but history isn’t one of them.” The group and the Civil War Preservation Trust are spearheading efforts to stop the Wilderness Wal-Mart. You can sign a petition at the NTHP site. The Civil War Preservation Trust provides ways to get involved as well as a plethora of information; photos of Wal-Mart, the Wilderness, and the threat of sprawl; and a map showing the location. Through the trust, you can send your concerns to the Orange County Supervisors in Virginia and donate to the Stop the Wal-Mart Fund.

An effort by Mindfulwalker.com to obtain comment from Wal-Mart on Dec. 23 was unsuccessful. Wal-Mart has told the local media covering this issue that it’s working with county officials to ensure the store’s design fits in with the special character of Orange County and that the store building will be situated a quarter of a mile from Route 3. The Wal-Mart spokesman said in the local press that the retailer plans to put a buffer of vegetation between the store and the highway. Question is, will Wal-Mart ultimately stick with its plans to build at this location?

Perhaps a buffer just isn’t enough in a country that is “over-stored” and undereducated about its own history.