620,000 tree plantings planned by Civil War anniversary By Allison Brophy
Champion

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Charlottesville Daily Progress, September 06, 2010
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 CULPEPER — The Journey Through Hallowed Ground wants to lay down roots —
lots of them — in its remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Starting next year through 2015, the Waterford-based history organization
will set out to plant 620,000 trees — about one for each soldier who died in
the war — along the 180-mile route from Monticello to Gettysburg, Pa.

The National Heritage Area and national scenic byway on which JTHG focuses
its preservation efforts has the country’s largest concentration of Civil
War battlefields.

A Culpeper Town Council committee endorsed the tree-planting plan at a
meeting last week, and the green idea also previously gained support from
the boards of supervisors in Culpeper, Fauquier, Albemarle and Spotsylvania
counties.

“Our aim is to plant one tree for each of the fallen,” Cate Magennis Wyatt,
JTHG president, told the Town Council committee at its recent meeting. “I
don’t know that it can be done, but it is an eloquent idea in theory and
practice.”

To accomplish the goal, a whopping 3,444 trees would be planted along every
mile of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, generally following U.S. 15.

Wyatt told the council committee the legacy project would not impose a cost
on localities. She said the American Chestnut Organization Virginia Chapter
had already offered to donate 100,000 trees.

The committee unanimously adopted a town-developed resolution in support of
the tree initiative. Councilor Jim Risner wanted one change, however, to the
last sentence of the resolution, which states, “the JTHG will plant one tree
for each citizen who sacrificed his life to create this union.”

The Confederates, of course, broke from the union in fighting the war.

“This was a war that was very divisive,” Risner said. “It was a trying time
in our history, but we got over it and we continue to get over it; planting
trees is a good way to do that.”

The committee agreed to strike the sentence in question from the resolution.
The Town Council will consider the initiative at its regular meeting Sept.
14.

In a follow-up conversation, Wyatt said the idea was to plant rows of trees
as if to mimic a battalion, thus creating powerful imagery reminding people
of the sacrifices made along the Journey. “We want people to recognize the
trees as a life that was lost,” she said.

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Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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