THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9410310066
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BRANDY STATION LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
After a succession of stunning victories against overwhelming odds, historic preservationists are only days away from losing a major battle they say will lead to the destruction of one of America's most significant Civil War battlefields.
Bulldozers are poised to roll over the lush, rolling plains where the biggest and most important cavalry battle in American history was fought. Where cannons once roared, residents like Joe Troilo and B.B. Mitchell fret they'll hear little more this time next year than the roar of powerful race cars hurtling around a $20 million Formula One track.
``People here have been friends all their lives - now they're fighting,'' says Troilo, 73, whose backyard contains the only plaque commemorating the June 9, 1863 Battle of Brandy Station, in which 8,000 Union soldiers surprised and almost beat 9,500 men led by the legendary rebel Jeb Stuart.
In a sense, prominant historians like Brian Pohanka, senior researcher for Time-Life's 27-book series on the Civil War and an adviser for the movie ``Gettysburg.'' insist, this tiny northern Virginia town is where the South lost the Civil War.
Up until this battle, Stuart had been invincible and was legendary. The surprise Union attack humiliated him, Pohanka says. Even though the Federals ultimately fled, it led Stuart on a headline-grabbing raid through Pennsylvania to polish his tarnished reputation.
In so doing, he neglected his main duty, to scout for Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Pohanka says. As a result, Lee - operating blind in enemy territory - stumbled a few weeks later into a little Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg. ``Brandy Station was a real watershed, a turning point,'' says Pohanka ``They surprised Stuart. It was shocking.''
What's now shocking to Pohanka, of Alexandria, Va., about half the residents of Culpeper County and preservationists everywhere, is that five years of legal maneuvering aimed at keeping the battlefield pristine apparently have failed.
Washington lawyer Tersh Boasberg, representing the Brandy Station Foundation and other preservationists, says bulldozers could move in any time to start on the racetrack county officials say is needed to boost their struggling economy.
The complicated fight essentially pits preservationists against two businesses and local proponents of economic growth.
In 1987, a firm called Elkwood Downs Limited Partnership began buying land from farmers and now claims it spent $17 million trying to develop a 1,445-acre office park on the battlefield. Preservationists blocked the dozers long enough to plunge Elkwood into financial trouble, and it filed for bankruptcy protection last year.
Two weeks ago, a federal bankruptcy judge approved its reorganization plan, including a proposal to sell 425 acres of the field to Benton Ventures Inc., a Bethesda, Md., firm, for $5,000 an acre. Benton's plan to build the racetrack has been endorsed by the chamber of commerce and county officials. Preservationists haven't surrendered yet, Boasberg says, but there's little more they can do. The ``witching hour'' for the deal was Oct. 31, but John Carradi, an official of the Brandy Station Preservation group, said Saturday that the sale already had closed. ``We will probably make a last-ditch lawsuit Monday to try to stop the bulldozers,'' he said. ``We're down to our last resort.''
Elkwood vice president Michael Armm said construction would start immediately.
``It is imminent,'' Armm says.
Adds Boasberg: ``The situation is pretty desperate.''
About the only reprieve, Boasberg says, could come if preservationists somehow mobilize and raise enough money to buy the property from the Bethesda firm, then convince it to abandon its plans for the racetrack. But that, he adds, is not likely.
Elkwood owner Lee Sammis said the area where the racetrack is to be built is not where ``the biggest part of the battle took place.''
He said Elkwood always was concious of the history of the area and that, ``I want the public to know we are not against historic preservation.
``I love history,'' Sammis said. ``Preservation is a great thing, but we should do it with reason and logic.''
The dispute has split this tightly knit, rural community. A poll by Mason-Dixon Opinion Research Inc. in Columbia, Md., found 58 percent of county residents opposed to the track.
But county supervisor Bill Chase, a farmer, West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, says the area needs it because ``we have a much higher than average'' unemployment rate and the facility could generate more than $20 million a year in revenues and hundreds of jobs.
``There's no doubt Jeb Stuart's feelings were hurt here, which may have caused him to do what he did,'' Chase says. ``But we need jobs. We're 25 miles from where Disney was going to build its park in Haymarket, and that fell through, and that would've meant jobs, too.''
Though the county may gain, Chase says he's lost many friends because ``people have strong feelings on this. Some of my best friends won't even speak to me. But I've voted for (development) because I'm convinced that's what the people want.''
Mitchell, president of the Brandy Station Foundation, said he has lost friends, too, conceding ``it's turned neighbor against neighbor because those of us who wanted to save the battlefield are treated as tree huggers and against all development. We're not against development, we just don't want to see the battlefield desecrated.''
Boasberg says the firm seems determined to go ahead because state and local officials are on its side. Corradi said he expects construction to begin this week on the racetrack.
A few years ago, developers gave up on a plan to build a huge shopping mall even closer to Manassas. But Pohanka says preservationists are losing less publicized fights and this may be the most bitter defeat of all.
In 1991, Congress established the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which concluded that ``the nation's Civil War heritage is in grave danger.'' Brandy Station was at the top of its list of 384 endangered battlefields in 25 states.
``What's happening at Brandy Station is symptomatic of the problems we face today, the extremely selfish attitude now sweeping the country,'' Pohanka says.
``If it existed from the beginning, Independence Hall in Philadelphia would be a parking lot. We would have no tangible history left. Troilo leaned against the Brandy Station marker and nodded toward the battlefield.
``I'd like to see it preserved,'' says Troilo. ``But it's split us here down the middle. Some want it, some don't.''
``But at Brandy Station, it's insult on top of injury,'' Pohanka says. ``A racetrack! A carnival atmosphere! It's obscene.''
Dale Morton, managing editor of the Culpeper Star-Exponent, says ``the town is supportive, and the chamber, and the county, everybody but the Brandy Station Foundation. It's caused a headache.''
KEYWORDS: HISTORIC PRESERVATION by CNB