If you take a look at the Civil War Preservation Trust’s 2010
list of most endangered battlefields, you’ll notice that some of
the sites included are national parks or have some similar type
of protective designation. On the face of it, this might seem a
little odd. You’d assume that once a site becomes a national
park, it’s safe and sound. Nobody is going to build a row of
condos on federally protected land, and no short-sighted local
zoning board can approve a retail development within a park’s
boundaries. The truth of the matter, though, is that while
designation as a park protects land within a site’s boundaries,
threats from outside those boundaries can be considerable.
Anyone who doubts the impact of development outside of a site’s
boundaries should visit Guilford Courthouse National Military
Park in Greensboro, NC. This is one of my favorite places, and
one of the most important pieces of ground in America, where a
British attempt to destroy Nathanael Greene’s army in March 1781
proved so costly that i