LOCUST GROVE, Va. (AP) — Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
It's up to the Orange County supervisors. If you've ever taken the Rt. 3 exit off 95 leading to the battlefield (and the Chancellorsville battlefield), you'll notice that the last thing that area needs is another massive shopping center. It's festooned with all varieties of stores as far as the eye can see, along with the accompanying traffic congestion. To build yet another monument to consumerism so close to the actual ground is disgraceful.