DURING THE CIVIL WAR, the battlefield of Manassas, Va., where Confederate general T.J. Jackson became known as Stonewall and 28,000 fell, was described as "the very vortex of hell" by one soldier. Now Manassas, about 26 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., is the vortex of a bitter clash that"s turned into the biggest historic-preservation battle in the country. On one side is the all-American Disney Company. On the other is a star-spangled band of defenders made up of 150 of the nation's most distinguished historians, many of its top environmental and preservationist groups, and such celebrity-value names as actor Robert Duvall, novelist William Styron, and filmmaker Ken Burns, creator of PBS' The Civil War series.
They're fighting over the project called Disney's America, a $650 million, 3,000-acre historical theme park and vacation development slated to be built just 4 miles from the battle site. Preliminary plans for the theme park, scheduled to be finished by 1998, include a Lewis and Clark raft ride, a Civil War fort, and a re-creation of the combat between the Monitor and the Merrimack. "It"s a shocking travesty of what history is all about," snaps Protect Historic America member Styron.
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