Battlefield Preservation
American Battlefield Trust and partners develop preservation-focused resources to siting utility scale solar
Friends of Cedar Mountain Battlefield applauds the efforts of the American Battlefield Trust, Preservation Virginia and Cultural Heritage Partners to develop resources to help guide utility scale solar to siting that preserves Virginia’s historic sites and landscapes. The integrity of our ongoing Rapidan Front Landscape Study, funded by an American Battlefield Protection Program grant, has twice been threatened by proposed utility scale solar projects encompassing thousands of acres in the area of study.
As Virginia’s clean energy efforts move forward, we support a collaborative approach to ensure protection of our state’s historic resources, highly valued by residents and visitors alike. Please take a moment to read the ABT and partners’ report and policy language developed as resources for siting utility scale solar plants. The policy language is intended for governments and planning officials involved in evaluating utility scale solar applications. Both resources provide insight into the complexity of balancing responsible renewable energy efforts with protection of historic resources.
Another utility scale solar project threatens historic land
Another solar developer has proposed a solar array project that, if approved, would be located in the study area for the Rapidan Front Landscape Study federal grant awarded to Friends of Cedar Mountain. This is the fourth utility scale project to be proposed in Culpeper County since 2018; all have posed a challenge to the integrity of the county’s historic landscape. Update 11/23/20: Maroon Solar has withdrawn its application.Maroon Solar (parent company Strata Solar) hopes to place solar panels to the east of Raccoon Ford Road, Route 617, north of Algonquin Trail. The proposed project area is 1700 acres. The map below shows the proposed location of the solar project superimposed on a Civil War era map that identifies Federal Army of the Potomac picket lines.
“MAP Showing the Picket Line of the FIRST and THIRD CAVALRY DIVISIONS, CAVALRY CORPS, ARMY of the POTOMAC, by Capt. V. F. von ROERBER” Picket lines marked in blue. Citation: United States War Department, Robert N Scott, H. M Lazelle, George B Davis, Leslie J Perry, Joseph W Kirkley, Fred C Ainsworth, et al. The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. Washington, Govt. Print. Off., to 1901, 1880. Image. https://www.loc.gov/item/03003452/.
Culpeper County’s Civil War history is extraordinarily rich, and there were troop movements in this project area during much of the Civil War. In addition, the project area is encircled by the documented historic sites of Cedar Mountain Battlefield, Morton’s Ford, and Brandy Station, which attract numerous visitors interested in heritage tourism.
In view of Maroon Solar’s proposed location, it is the opinion of the board of directors of Friends of Cedar Mountain that a county decision to move ahead with this project would undercut the cultural landscape and research study efforts already in progress to support our federal grant through the Department of the Interior’s American Battlefield Protection Program. The board of Friends of Cedar Mountain will ask for a hold on this solar project until our grant research team has the opportunity to complete their work and fully document the historic value of the area.
-Culpeper Star Exponent article on Maroon Solar - Nov 8, 2020
Expert Research Team Supporting ABPP Grant
We are very pleased and honored that John Salmon and Glenn Stach, well known for their expertise in historic research and preservation, will complete the research related to our Rapidan Front Landscape Study.
The Rapidan Front Landscape Study is supported by an American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) grant, term 2020-2022. Grant research will look at the 1863-64 Union Winter Encampment that brought more than 100,000 soldiers to Culpeper County and covered almost half of the county. Research will also look at Somerville, Raccoon and Morton’s Fords, critical Rapidan River crossing points for both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Please refer to the map at the end of this post for the preliminary project study area.
Meet the grant research team:
John S. Salmon, Project Historian for the Rapidan Front Landscape Study
project
John S. Salmon has been researching and writing about Virginia history for more than forty years. He holds a B.A. degree from the University of Virginia and an M.A. from the College of William and Mary, both in American history. He was an archivist (1972–1987) at the Virginia State Library (present-day Library of Virginia), where he compiled finding aids and guides to state records. In 1987, he joined the Virginia Landmarks Commission (now the Virginia Department of Historic Resources) as staff historian and state historical highway marker manager. He surveyed Virginia battlefields for the Shenandoah Civil War Battlefield Survey and the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission (1990–1993) and wrote The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide
(Stackpole Books, 2001) to 123 of the state’s battlefields including Cedar Mountain, Kelly’s Ford, and Brandy Station in Culpeper County.
After retiring from state employment in 2001, Mr. Salmon served as staff historian for the Tredegar National Civil War Center Foundation, helping draft plans for a national Civil War museum and learning center. Since leaving that position in the summer of 2004, he has served as a historical consultant. Mr. Salmon writes and edits marker and brochure texts for Virginia Civil War Trails, Inc., a nonprofit educational corporation. Since the mid-1990s, VCWT has created and installed more than 1,000 markers along driving trails linking Civil War sites in six states (Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee).
Mr. Salmon has written more than seventy National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) nominations in four states. In Virginia, his Civil War battlefields and sites nominations include Beaverdam Depot (listed 1988), Fort Riverview (1989), Brandy Station (1989), Bristoe Station (1991), Belle Isle (1995), Fort Pocahontas (1999), Milford (2004), Unison (2011), and Rose Hill in Culpeper County (2020).
Mr. Salmon also wrote a Multiple Property Documentation form, “The Civil War in Virginia, 1861–1865: Historic and Archaeological Resources” (2000). In addition, he wrote a Preliminary Information Form (DHR) for “Rappahannock River 1862 Northern Virginia Campaign Rural Historic District, Fauquier County” (2011). He also wrote the historical narrative for “The Upper Rappahannock River Mapping Project: The Civil War in Culpeper and Fauquier Counties, 1862–1864” (2014) for Rivanna Archaeological Services. For the same firm, he wrote the historical narrative for the Ball’s Bluff Battlefield and National Cemetery Boundary Expansion, Loudoun County (2016).
Glenn Stach, Preservation Landscape Architect and Planner, Stach PLLC.
Mr. Stach is a subject expert practicing within the narrowly focused field of cultural landscape preservation and planning, with concentrated expertise in battlefield preservation. His ten-year involvement supporting battlefield preservation in Culpeper and Orange counties (with projects at Wilderness, and all six nationally recognized battlefields in Culpeper) afford him a healthy grasp of the cultural landscape and its many Civil War era features.
Mr. Stach recently completed a comprehensive analysis of Confederate Encampment sites across the Rapidan from the study area on Clarks Mountain and in the process collected compelling contributing source material investigation for this study area. Additionally, Mr. Stach led a viewshed study encompassing much of this study area that demonstrates the interconnectedness of the wartime wig-wag signal station network across this region and historic and contemporary relevance to viewshed integrity and preservation. In 2014 Mr. Stach was hired by VDHR to lead battlefield friends development efforts across the commonwealth, a project funded by the ABPP that has had a profound effect on the organizing and support for battlefield resources in Culpeper. Mr. Stach will support John Salmon in mapping the resources of the grant study area, bringing his analysis and cultural landscape perspective (KOCOA) to the study.
