Ohio sites in danger

Every time I visit my wife's relatives in Ohio, the local papers seem to be reporting on some historical site under threat. Now here's an article on how Ohio's only Civil War battlefield may shortly be excavated by a gravel company:

On the morning of July 19, 1863, Union troops waged a four-hour running battle on a foggy Ohio River bend against Confederate Gen. John Morgan, who had cut a swath of destruction through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.
Today, the state's only Civil War battlefield is as ghostly as the battle itself, with little to indicate its historic significance.

Farmhouses and trailers dot the rolling southeast-Ohio bottom land that runs up to the river. A four-acre park with a cobblestone monument and green weathered bronze plaque mark the 1,500-acre battlefield known as Buffington Island. Nearby are a shelter, picnic tables, a lone water pump and a few rusting grills and trash cans.

A gravel company is poised to excavate some of the battlefield, named by the Washington-based Civil War Preservation Trust as among the nation's top 25 most endangered in the country. . .

Civil War sites, Underground Railroad stops, pioneer settlements, cemeteries, farmsteads, school buildings and even towns have vanished or are in danger of disappearing as Ohio prepares to celebrate its bicentennial. Neglect, lack of financing and outright disregard have been to blame, historians say. . .

State Sen. Michael Shoemaker, a Bourneville Democrat, said little government money is available to preserve Ohio's historic sites.

The Ohio Bicentennial Commission wants to make the public more aware of sites by placing more markers. When the commission got involved in the program in 1998, there were 250. Now there are 400, with 300 more expected to go up by the end of 2003.

The brown, cast-metal markers describe the historical significance of the sites, from Thomas Edison's birthplace in Erie County to the Alligator Mound in Licking County, a giant earthen sculpture built between 800 and 1200 B.C.

Posted by David on January 4, 2003 2:18 PM