WASHINGTON — The National Park Service has awarded more than $1.4 million in grants to help with land acquisition at five Civil War battlefields.
Grant recipients include battlefields at Gettysburg, Pa. ($217,000); Wilson’s Creek, Mo. ($400,000); Bentonville, N.C. ($114,000); Cedar Creek, Va. ($430,000); and Chancellorsville, Va. ($246,425).
Funding
The grants were made from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to help states and local communities acquire and preserve threatened Civil War battlefield land outside the boundaries of National Park units.
Priority was given to battlefields listed in the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the nation’s Civil War battlefields. Funds were awarded based on the property’s location within CWSAC-defined core and/or study areas, the threat to the battlefield land to be acquired and the availability of required non-Federal matching funds.
The grant funds were made available under the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011, which appropriated $8,982,000 for the Civil War battlefield land acquisition grants program. Applications for the balance of the funds are accepted at any time.
