County, Friends Group Sign Deal To
Create Stafford, Va. Civil War Park
By Scott C. Boyd
(April 2009 Civil War News)

STAFFORD, Va. — An agreement was signed in early March to create a park at a Stafford County campsite with fortifications that some call the “Valley Forge of the Civil War.”

The county-owned 25-acre site by Accokeek Creek, and adjacent to the regional landfill, was used as Union Army quarters the winter of 1862-63 after their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Civil War campsites as well-preserved as these are rare, according to Glenn Trimmer, director of the Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites (FSCWS). Trimmer’s group wants to create a park at the site. (See November 2008 story.) The March agreement, “really puts us on the way,” he said.

A FSCWS proposal to establish a park there was accepted by the Stafford County Board of Supervisors (BOS) on Dec. 16. Supervisor Harry Crisp presented the FSCWS proposal in the context of a larger action plan with short- and long-term goals that included initial funding for the effort.

The short-term goals include establishing a steering group to guide development of a master plan for the site; finalizing the county’s agreement for the FSCWS to build an access road, create hiking trails and place interpretive signs; and setting aside money from the landfill dividend to support development of the park.

The long-term goals are to get the site listed in the Register of National Historic Places, finalize its boundaries and place a protective conservation easement on the property.

Crisp’s action plan was approved, but Supervisors voted twice on how much money they would allocate for the park.

The FSCWS had only asked for $15,000 to pay for an engineering feasibility study to determine the best way to place an access road into the site. Trimmer said that was the minimum needed and FSCWS would raise the funds to pay for building the access road and the other elements.

He included in the proposal that if the FSCWS could not raise specific amounts by set dates within three years, the county could withdraw from the agreement.

Trimmer’s proposal had suggested that Stafford County use money from its landfill dividend to fund his $15,000 request. The dividend is Strafford County’s share from participating in a regional landfill. In July the governing R-Board, which handles the money received from operating the landfill, set aside $115,000 from Stafford’s proceeds for the Civil War campsite park.

After some amendments and two votes, the Supervisors voted to set aside $25,000 of that $115,000 and put the remaining $90,000 in the county’s general fund.

After the vote Crisp noted, to laughs, something that he would like to change right away. “We need to come up with a different name for this, because calling it the ‘Landfill Civil War Park Site’ isn’t exactly what we want.”

The language of the agreement between the county and FSCWS was finalized at the Feb. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting, after amending it to add two provisions explained by Supervisor Paul Milde.

The first was that there be what Milde termed “incremental overview” of the FSCWS fundraising efforts. “We don’t want to wait three years to find out that this experiment failed,” he said.

The FSCWS must raise one third of the estimated required funding after one year, two thirds after two years and the balance after two years and six months, or the county may withdraw from the agreement without further obligation. Trimmer had included this provision in his initial proposal, but it was not in the final agreement until added by amendment.

The second provision includes options in the engineering study

for how to connect the new park with U.S. Route 1, which goes through the county, and to connect it with two other nearby Civil War sites not in the park itself.

The amended proposal, including allocating $25,000 for the FSCWS engineering study, passed unanimously.