ORANGE -- National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis on Wednesday lauded Walmart for abandoning plans for a Supercenter on land that was part of the Civil War “Battle of the Wilderness."
“Walmart has crafted a solution where battlefield resources and the visitor experience will be protected, while still providing for the commercial needs of Orange County," Jarvis said. "This is the end of three years of controversy and, hopefully, a new beginning for cooperative preservation.”
Jarvis commended the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield and a larger historic preservation community for their steadfast opposition to major commercial development at the gateway to the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park.
In August 2009, the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a special use permit to allow construction of the Wal-Mart Supercenter and several other retail outlets near the “Wilderness Junction” west of Fredericksburg.
The historic preservation community, led by Friends of the Battlefield, filed a lawsuit to stop the development plan. Wednesday was the second day of the hearing in Orange County Circuit Court. Attorneys for Walmart announced they would not build the store.
The Battle of the Wilderness sprawled over several thousand acres about 15 miles west of Fredericksburg on May 5-6, 1864. It was the first clash between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Historians call it the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.