The Nation - News from July 1, 1988

A House subcommittee approved a bill to take lands from a private developer planning to build a shopping center adjacent to a Civil War battlefield. The national parks and public lands panel of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee acted to take control of a 542-acre tract bordering the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Historians say the shopping center would destroy the still-rustic sanctity of the 4,600-acre battlefield park in Prince William County, Va. The bill would also close two roads now running through the park, and the federal government would pay the site’s developer, the Hazel/Peterson Cos., for the land seized.