National Parks Traveler Podcast Episode 259 | Manassas Battlefield Threats

By Jess Repanshek - January 28th, 2024 7:00am

Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia protects one of the defining battlefields of the Civil War. It was there that the first battle of the war was waged, in 1861, it was the scene of a second battle a year later, and it was where Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson got his Stonewall nickname.

Despite the significance of Manassas, the Prince William County supervisors in December agreed to rezone 2,100 acres adjacent to the battlefield to allow for the world’s largest data processing center to be built there. A lawsuit recently was filed in a bid to stop the development. Among the plaintiffs is the American Battlefield Trust, a non-profit organization that works to protect American battlefields from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. David Duncan, president of that organization, joins us today to explain why the Trust thinks it is wrong to build the data processing center next to Manassas National Battlefield Park.

0:02 National Parks Traveler introduction
0:12 Episode Intro with Kurt Repanshek
0:59 Shenandoah - Randy Petersen - The Sounds of Shenandoah
1:21 Great Smoky Mountains Association
1:43 Interior Federal Credit Union
2:12 Episode 259 - Manassas Battlefield Threat
13:49 Shee Beg Shee Mor - Nature’s Symphony - The Sounds of Acadia
14:06 NPT Promo
14:58 Episode 259 - Manassas Battlefield Threat Continues
44:08 Wabanaki - Nature’s Symphony - The Sounds of Acadia
44:27 Episode Closing
44:58 Orange Tree Productions
45:31 Splitbeard Productions
45:42 National Parks Traveler footer

Manassas National Battlefield Park

National Parks Traveler Podcast

By Jess Repanshek - January 28th, 2024 7:00am

Comments

Permalink Submitted by Hunter on January 31, 2024 - 1:41pm.

Here’s what people need to understand about national parks. The park land was made to specifically protect and preserve an area. If the intent was to keep the land surrounding the parks preserved from being developed then the park service should have purchased the surrounding land as well. The whole point of a park is to protect that land and that land only. Everything else is up to the private land owners and the local government to decide what to do with it. If not then by default the federal government has illegally taken your property rights without compensation. People need to stop trying to claim that land touching national parks shouldn’t be developed. That’s not how this works.

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