Background post: One-tank trips: Belle Grove Plantation.
Recently, author and blogger Eric J. Wittenberg posted an article about a sell-out by a previously well respected historical preservation group that traded the rights to mine historical property in exchange for a token piece of land that abuts their holdings (the original article follows). The sad tale reminded me of the ill-fated and illogical swap the National Park Service did with Gettysburg College a few years ago that forever ruined a key portion of the first day's battlefield at Gettysburg. Short-sighted, short-term thinking often clouds longer-term judgement, and we are left with a scarred landscape that can never be restored properly.
Here in York County, similar preservation efforts have been underway for years to try to save the Camp Security prisoner-of-war site from the American Revolution. Recently, the skirmish field at Wrightsville has been compromised by new construction, and other sites of interest to the historian are long gone in the name of "progress." I was in Kernstown, Virginia, last weekend and heartily applaud the efforts of the locals there in the last five years to band together to save, preserve, and interpret a key part of the three Kernstown battlefields, although much has already been lost.
