Efforts to save Civil War earthworks focus on North Georgia

ATLANTA — Whitfield County, Georgia boasts the most surviving Civil War fortifications in the country. Preservationists and local leaders want to keep it that way, but there’s a hurdle: Most of the war’s remnants are on private property.

The quandary exists throughout the state. Of nearly 400 Civil War sites in Georgia identified as having historic value, about 350 are privately held.

Subdivisions, roadways, businesses and other development are encroaching on the trenches, earthworks and natural fortifications left behind by soldiers.

Preservation groups hope to stave off the march of time, protecting sites such as a large farm in an area of Whitfield County known as Crow Valley.

The Civil War Trust, based in Washington, D.C., is working to acquire and preserve the $1.38 million property, which will eventually be turned over to the county.

“It could have been lost forever, easily,” said Greg Cockburn, a Dalton native who has spent decades studying local history.

The claims on battlefield ruins is a relatively new distinction for the northwest Georgia county, where the final chapter of the war began with the start of U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.

“Not Gettysburg, not Vicksburg, not Fredericksburg or any other ‘burg. Whitfield County — Dalton, Ga. — has more earthworks than any other county in the nation,” said Bob Jenkins, president of the nonprofit group Save the Dalton Battlefields.

Civil War soldiers — primarily Confederate troops, who spent months fortifying Rocky Face Ridge near Dalton — left an array of fortifications.

Their handmade defenses include stone breastworks, trenches, artillery emplacements and rifle pits.

It’s hard to quantify how many are out there, said Kevin McAuliff, senior planner with the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission. But it was enough, he said, for the National Park Service to tell him that the county has the most intact Civil War defenses.

Charlie Crawford, president of the Georgia Battlefields Association, acknowledges the finding.

“There is a contention, with some justification, to say that Whitfield County probably has more surviving Civil War earthworks on it than any other county in the country,” said Crawford, whose group helps acquire these historic sites.

McAuliff said most people may not even know that the long-ago abandoned defenses exist on their property.

“A lot of them have no idea,” he said. “They know that there’s a pile of rocks, or they know that there’s a ditch over there, or there’s an unusually high pile of dirt over there.”

One of the latest efforts to protect those remnants of battle began when Cockburn heard that a local dentist was preparing to retire and sell his sprawling 309 acres.

Cockburn recognized an opportunity to preserve a piece of history that might otherwise be bulldozed — the fate of local fortifications as recent as a couple years ago.

He moved quickly, he said, to notify the right people that the land was going on the market.

Cockburn is hesitant to talk about the fortifications that dot the property. Even though state law prohibits digging without proper permission, people have ravaged these surviving features in search of uniform buttons, bullets and other artifacts left behind by soldiers.

Cockburn said he’s seen earthworks dug up, and even trees toppled, because someone’s metal detector pointed there.

Efforts have only intensified — around Dalton and even near better-known sites including Gettysburg in Pennsylvania — with the emergence of popular TV shows such as “American Digger.”

These unprotected archeological sites don’t need more attention, he said, though they likely have little left to offer. “They’ve been pretty much picked clean by the relic hunters,” he said.

Still, the sites are valuable as educational tools that provide insight into how soldiers, particularly the Confederate armies on the defensive, used the terrain to their advantage.

“The fortifications are artifacts in themselves,” Cockburn said. “It’s more than a pile of rocks and dirt. It shows their intellectual thinking.”

Local officials share the appreciation. Mike Babb, chairman of the Whitfield County Commission, said the government tries to acquire historic properties when it can.

The county will chip in $150,000 from a local sales tax toward buying the Crow Valley farm, which connects to more than 600 acres at Rocky Face Ridge that the county already owns and is now an official historic district.

The move will help preserve the battlefield where Gen. William Sherman’s Union army began its assault on the Confederate Army of Tennessee 152 years ago Saturday.

It will also create a public park with mountain-bike and hiking trails, among other amenities. Owning the farmland also ensures public access to Rocky Face Ridge, which currently requires a difficult hike up steep terrain.

Babb, who is not seeking re-election, said he expects criticism for using any county funds to buy the property. But future generations will appreciate it, he said, especially as the city continues to develop.

“Seventy-five years after I’m dead, I think people will say it’s neat to have 1,000 acres of green space this close to the city of Dalton,” he said.

About half of the money for the purchase comes from federal funds set aside for battlefield preservation. Babb said this week that the more than $500,000 that the county needed to raise has been pledged by various groups.

The Civil War Trust is also facilitating the purchase of property in what’s known as the Reed’s Bridge area in Catoosa County, where the nearby battle at Chickamauga began.

This 31-acre property is not currently part of the federal battlefield park that was created more than a century ago. A Trust spokesperson said the $191,000 property is desirable, in part, because it helps stem rapid development nearby.

When the new park opens in Dalton, likely sometime next year, it will position the city to capitalize on its history in a way that it never has, said Cockburn.

He said an international audience, familiar with Georgia’s important role in the war thanks to “Gone With the Wind,” will eagerly pull off Interstate 75 to see where federal troops overtook rebel soldiers as they pushed toward Atlanta.

When visitors stop, Crawford said they won’t have to stretch their imaginations quite as much as they do in parts of Atlanta, where the story of the Civil War is mostly told through historic markers.

“I can’t say it looks like it did in 1864. That’s not literally true,” he said. “But it’s certainly much closer to 1864 than some place like Atlanta is.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.