Preserving History
Civil War Battlefields Losing Ground to Development

Oct. 4, 2001 -- In June 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman lost 3,000 Union troops in the battle of Kennesaw Mountain northwest of Atlanta -- three times as many as his Confederate counterpart, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. A different sort of battle for Kennesaw Mountain continues today, NPR's Kathy Lohr reports for Morning Edition.

Kolb's Farm House is the only building in Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park to survive the Civil War. Photo: National Park Service

Civil War battlefields are under siege once again in the South, historians say. According to one study, an acre of Civil War battleground is lost to subdivisions, shopping centers and other forms of development every 10 minutes.

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park stretches over 3,000 acres near Marietta, Ga. Civil War soldiers dug more than 100 miles of trenches out of the red clay soil. Today, only 11 miles of earthworks remain.

"In the time that I've been here, we see all of this construction and ... none of that was there when I started working at the park in 1974," Ranger Willie Johnson says.

Cheatham Hill Confederate artillery battery at Kennesaw Mountain. Photo: National Park Service

The demise of Civil War sites around the country has alarmed historians. A congressional study showed that by 1993, about 20 percent of the Civil War battlefields had already been lost to suburban sprawl.

One developer is creating a multi-use office and housing park just north of Kennesaw Mountain. The park's southern tip is now a major intersection for Cobb County and there are plans to build a 24-hour gas station and convenience store there.

"We're trying to maintain as best we can the historic scene and give people the visitors here a high-quality experience ... one they can come in here and feel that they've stepped back in time to a certain extent," Park Superintendent John Cissell says. "But that's getting harder and harder to do."

Top 10 Endangered Civil War Battlefields • Allatoona, Ga. • Brices Cross Roads, Miss. • Fort Fisher, N.C. • Gettysburg, Pa. • Harpers Ferry, W.Va. • Loudoun Valley, Va. • Mansfield, La. • Raymond, Miss. • Stones River, Tenn. • The Wilderness, Va. Source: The Civil War Preservation Trust

Other Resources

• Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, map and National Park Service history of development pressures on the park

• The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and a battle summary

• American Battlefield Protection Program

• The Civil War Preservation Trust

• Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation's Civil War Battlefields