MENU Appendix V (omitted from on-line edition) |
More Battles MORE BATTLES The Horse and the Mouse The Virginia piedmont region "has soaked up more of the blood, sweat and tears,...has bred more founding fathers, inspired more soaring hopes and ideals and witnessed more triumphs and failures, victories and lost causes" than any other piece of the nation's landscape, wrote Yale University historian C. Vann Woodward. "If such a past can render a soil 'sacred,' this sliver is the perfect venue." These words, written in response to the Walt Disney Company's 1993 proposal to build a history theme park 3.5 miles from the Manassas National Battlefield Park, helped give a national perspective to a local land-use battle. [1] The proposed site for the Disney theme park lacked historic significance and its lands had never been identified for acquisition in Manassas battlefield park. But Disney's America, as it would have been called, represented a very real threat to places like the battlefield park. Urban sprawl with its encroaching residential developments, office complexes, retail centers, and service facilities have been slowly advancing on rural areas. In most cases, its appearance attracts little notice beyond local preservationists and park officials who want to minimize visual and environmental disruption. The battles are usually fought in local zoning board meetings. The Disney proposal brought the urban sprawl issue to national attention and helped educate Americans about its effects.
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