With latest purchase, group has now protected 2,000 acres at Bentonville Battlefield
A national preservation group has purchased another piece of the Bentonville Battlefield, continuing its effort to ensure the site of the biggest Civil War battle in North Carolina doesn’t disappear under houses or other development.
American Battlefield Trust paid about $725,000 for nearly 140 acres of farmland near C.W. Flowers Store, where Harper House and Devils Racetrack roads meet. The land, bisected by the Johnston and Wayne county line, was occupied by Union troops at the start of the second day of the three-day battle in March 1865.
American Battlefield Trust and its predecessor, the Civil War Preservation Trust, have now purchased more than 2,000 acres at Bentonville, using government grants and donations from supporters. It turns the property over to the state, which operates the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site.
The state could not have acquired anywhere near as much property as the trust has in the last 20 years, said Colby Stevens, the site’s manager.
“The trust is the main reason the historic site is the size it is today,” Stevens said in an interview. “We, down the road, might could have acquired a few tracts here or there, but nothing of the size and scope that we have today.”
Some 60,000 Union and 20,000 Confederate troops met at Bentonville in what was the last major Southern attack of the war, as Gen. Joseph E. Johnston tried to stop Gen. William T. Sherman’s Union move northward toward the strategic rail hub at Goldsboro. The battle left more than 4,100 men killed, wounded or missing and only delayed Sherman’s advance.
The battlefield covers some 6,000 acres of mostly forest and farmland. On the battle’s centennial, the state opened a visitors center next to the restored home of John and Amy Harper, where Union surgeons treated wounded men.
By 1999, the state owned only 156 acres of the battlefield. That year, the Washington, D.C.-based Civil War trust named Bentonville one of the nation’s most endangered battlefields, mostly due to development pressure from the Triangle, and began raising money to increase the size of the historic site.
“Bentonville is easily the most important Civil War site in North Carolina,” the group’s director of policy, Jim Campi, said at the time. “What we’re hoping to do is act now when the threat is building but not yet too intense.”
Battlefield area remains rural, for now
The trust bought property a little at a time and turned it over to the state. The historic site works to protect and interpret trenches, rifle pits and other remnants of the battle, but in many cases leases the fields back to the farmers, many of whom have worked this land for generations, Stevens said.
“What we’re after are the woods,” he said. “At Bentonville, in most cases, if you have woods, that means that you have trenches — the trenches that were dug here in 1865.”
The development pressure the trust feared 20 years ago hasn’t materialized yet, Stevens said. Most of this corner of Johnston County is still rural, with a strong and active farming community.
But Harper House is only a 45-minute drive from downtown Raleigh, and the suburban development that made Johnston the state’s fastest-growing county over the last decade is creeping eastward.
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About 60,000 people visited the Bentonville historic site last year, Stevens said. In addition to Harper House and the visitors center, there are five miles of trails, including a segment of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, with another mile extension in the works on property acquired by the trust.
Visitors also can take a driving tour of the battlefield, with eight information stops along the way. Only one of those stops involves Day 2 of the battle, and the land recently purchased by the trust will allow the state to add another one.
“We now have property, a large chunk of battlefield, right where things kick off on Day 2,” Stevens said. “Now we have an area that we can really start looking at how can we get visitors out there. That’s real exciting.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2023 at 5:30 AM with the headline "With latest purchase, group has now protected 2,000 acres at Bentonville Battlefield."
