Suburban growth in the region has accelerated to the point that an estimated 26,000 vehicles squeeze through the park each day. But the debate has lost sight of a very real and ever-worsening problem: Commuter and industrial traffic threatens to eclipse this national park, one of America’s crown jewels. Good points have been made by both sides about the project’s potential benefits and side effects. But as someone who has studied and explored every inch of these battlefields, I have watched the debate over the proposed Bi-County Parkway with intense interest. I am not a municipal planner my expertise lies in history and the park’s visitor experience. But this causes a funnel of congestion within the park, particularly at the intersection with Sudley Road (Route 234). Park officials and supporters have thus far resisted widening the road beyond two lanes through the battlefield and losing historic land in the process. The old Warrenton Turnpike, now Lee Highway (Route 29), features bumper-to-bumper congestion as it runs through both battlefields. Today, and for many years, the chief threat has been choking commuter and industrial traffic through the heart of the park.
Even Disney was rebuffed in its bid to build a heritage-themed park nearby.īut just as the battlefields’ ease of access to Washington via major 19th-century roads allowed curious picnickers to watch the smoke rise from the first Battle of Bull Run, so too has this proximity doomed Manassas National Battlefield Park to be one of the country’s most endangered battlefields. For 60 years, activists have fought off numerous attempts to mar the landscape with inappropriate, encroaching development, including a freeway, a giant cemetery and a 1.5 million-square-foot mall.
Twice in 13 months, Union and Confederate soldiers spread out in battle lines on the sides of this historic roadway and engaged in Civil War clashes that helped shape the course of history.īrave Americans consecrated this land with their blood, and subsequent generations have honored that memory.
More than 150 years ago, the battles of Bull Run were fought in the fields and hollows along the Warrenton Turnpike.