Central Virginia Battlefields Trust

About Us

OUR MISSION

“The mission of Central Virginia Battlefields Trust is to preserve land associated with the four major Civil War campaigns: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Mine Run, and the Overland Campaign, including the Wilderness and Spotsylvania.”

OUR MOTTO

“Preserving Dirt and Grass”

“Land Never Forgets”

BECOME A PARTNER IN PRESERVATION

We have several membership levels and giving options.

Become A Member

OUR HISTORY

THE CHALLENGE:

Between 1862 and 1864, two great armies clashed in the Rappahannock River region. Their battlegrounds have entered the nation’s memory as Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Mine Run, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House.
Within an 18 month span nearly 200,000 combatants converged on this small area leaving over 100,000 casualties and a devastated landscape.
Veterans of these battles began to preserve the scenes of their great conflicts in the late 1800s, but it was not until 1927 that a portion of their battlegrounds came under the protection of the National Park Service.
Today, these historic places are seriously threatened by ever-encroaching sprawl, housing developments, data centers, warehouse distribution centers, and traffic congestion. Location, a key element of what brought the contending armies here more than 160 years ago, now encourages residential and commercial development at a staggering pace. Since 1970, the population of Fredericksburg and its surrounding counties has witnessed a growth rate four times that of Virginia as a whole.
All across America, urban and suburban development threatens to destroy our nation’s most sacred ground. Once it is gone, another vital piece of our nation’s past disappears. No place in the United States is this destruction more prevalent that in Central Virginia, “the cockpit of the Civil War.”
The Civil War’s most famous battlefields—Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House—and many other lesser-known engagements, such as Mine Run are under attack again, not from invading armies, but from shopping malls, industrial parks, and housing complexes.

CENTRAL VIRGINIA BATTLEFIELD TRUST (CVBT) WAS FORMED:

A group of concerned citizens in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, area decided it was time to stand up to the senseless destruction of our heritage and to form a historic lands trust organization. The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT) was incorporated in 1996 and adopted as its mission the preservation of historic battlefield lands.
Our motto became “Dirt and Grass.” Since then, we have helped to preserve nearly 2,000 acres of critical ground on the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House, as well as at Brandy Station to date.
In addition to purchasing land, our mission includes advocacy for battlefield preservation. At the state and federal levels, advocacy is in many cases relatively impersonal. However, at the local level, closer to home and in our communities, advocacy can be more personal, and therefore can become more confrontational. Consequently, CVBT decided early on to work in cooperation with local governments rather than in opposition to them. Over the years, we have joined in partnership with developers, preservation organizations, and local governments on several projects. We are proud of the solutions that have resulted in preserved acreage.
CVBT remains proactive, constantly engaged in ongoing projects and negotiations, and with a continuing focus on and commitment to our mission of battlefield preservation. Today our mission also positively impacts our community’s quality of life by creating open green spaces.
CVBT employs a staff of only two. The President and all CVBT board members are 100% volunteer. Our lean organization structure allows us to invest all of the donations that we possibly can into saving the battlefields.