U.S. Warns Against Widening Roads at Manassas Battlefield

The Interior Department, stepping into the debate over a proposed Disney theme park near Haymarket, Va., has warned Prince William County that any development plan that counts on widening roads through nearby Manassas National Battlefield Park is “unacceptable.”

But in a letter to county officials outlining its position, the federal agency that oversees the park also appeared to push for a compromise between preservationists and the Walt Disney Co. over the $650-million project.

Interior officials focused their criticism on the county, not Disney, and said the “likely presence of Disney’s America” could spur “a livable, vibrant community located between Disney’s America on the west and Manassas National Battlefield on the east.”

Such a compromise, the letter hinted, might be reached if Disney were to support the Interior Department’s effort to close the battlefield roads, rather than enlarge them as county officials want to do.

For years, Interior officials have wanted to close the two heavily traveled highways that bisect the battlefield and carry thousands of northern Virginia commuters daily.

In the six-page letter the county received Friday, Assistant Interior Secretary George T. Frampton Jr. and National Park Service Director Roger G. Kennedy noted that the county’s plan to handle traffic generated by a Disney park assumes that one road, U.S. 29, would be widened from two to four lanes.

That could relieve choked roads around the Disney site four miles west of the battlefield, but would cause “severe, irrevocable and unacceptable” impacts on a “national treasure,” the federal officials said.

“This is sacred ground, honored by the blood of American heroes” in two Civil War battles, which already faces dangerous and distracting traffic problems, Frampton and Kennedy said in the letter to Planning Commission Chairman Gregory Gorgone. “We cannot believe the Disney Co. would favor such a course of action.”

In two battles in 1861 and 1862, about 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded in some of the bloodiest fighting in the Civil War. Both were Confederate victories.