Existing comment:
Saving the Ground:
"It has been said that, at its best, preservation engages the past in a conversation with the present over a mutual concern for the future."
-- William J. Murtagh
The earliest battlefield preservation around Richmond occurred in the 1920s. Public-spirited Richmonders privately assembled several hundred acres of critical land, primarily through donation, including barely more than 100 acres at Malvern Hill. Eventually, these parcels became the Richmond National Battlefield Park, which opened to the public in 1944.
Beginning in the early 1990s, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites -- today known as the Civil War Trust -- began acquiring battlefield land at Glendale and Malvern Hill from willing sellers. In less than two decades they secured nearly 1,500 acres. The permanent protection of the Glendale/Frayser's Farm battlefield, from scratch, has no equivalent in modern Civil War battlefield preservation history. Today the Civil War Trust and other nonprofit groups continue fighting for the long-term preservation of these battlefields.
This map shows national park land at Malvern Hill in the 1930s and areas added to the park since 1990 at both the Glendale and Malvern Hill battlefields. |