You say you want a revolution? In this, the 39th week of our highly selective tour through the past 20 years of local news and arts in C-VILLE, we turn our attention to exactly that. Nothing says history quite like a Civil War re-enactment. Or, did we mean to say Wal-Mart? Earlier this year, we reported on the controversy surrounding the Wilderness Battlefield—a 55-acre tract of land northeast of Charlottesville that the corporation is eyeing for a future Supercenter. Speaking of revolution, any time you’re talking change, the name Bono can’t be far behind. As we gear up for the band’s stop at Scott Stadium on their 360° Tour, we recall its instructions on How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.
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Paging through the archives
“When Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first met in battle, it was in May 1864, at a site called Wilderness—just 50 miles northeast of Charlottesville. And the result of that meeting was some of the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War.
The intersection near the proposed site isn’t exactly pristine. There’s already a McDonald’s, a Sheetz, a 7-Eleven and a string of offices. The place is a densely forested tract of land located at the intersection of Routes 3 and 20. It is at this same intersection that Wal-Mart intends to build a 141,000-square-foot Supercenter, and it’s here that a different fight is shaping up, with preservationists against property-rights advocates in yet another quarrel over the development of historic green spaces.”—Kathryn Faulkner, March 17, 2009
Getting covered
November 23, 2004
