Buffington Island Update

We had our quarterly meeting of the Buffington Island Battlefield Preservation Foundation yesterday. We learned some good news. The Ohio Historical Society has set aside funds to establish an interpretive kiosk at the four-acre battlefield park that it owns. Consequently, the two architects and the display designer who will be responsible for setting up this display attended the meeting. This is great news, as there is almost n interpretation on the battlefield.

In addition, we learned that more than 600 signs will be installed along the route of Morgan’s Ride through Ohio during 2009 and 2010. Obviously, some of this interpretation will affect the battlefield at Buffington Island. My view on it is the more the merrier. We can’t have too much interpretation.

Also, my efforts to develop an advisory board for the Foundation are beginning to pay some dividends. So far, Bud Hall, Mark Grimsley, Lesley Gordon, Pete Carmichael, Mark Snell, Ethan Rafuse, Ken Noe, and Brooks Simpson have all agreed to serve on our advisory board. They will make great additions to our efforts, and I appreciate their agreement to do so.

After the meeting, we paid a visit to the battlefield. It’s actually been a couple of years since my last visit. In fact, the last time I was there, the sand and gravel company had not commenced mining operations there yet. It was very only about 20 degrees and quite breezy yesterday, meaning that it was REALLY cold out there, and the conditions were less than ideal for an extended session of battlefield stomping. Consequently, we did an abbreviated tour intended to show the OHS folks what they needed to see in order to do their work at the battlefield.

It broke my heart to see what the sand and gravel company has done to the heart of the battlefield. It looks like a war zone. There are deep pits, and lots of heavy machinery present to remove the gravel from the battlefield. A big chunk of the section of the field where the heaviest and most protracted fighting occurred is torn up forever. Unfortunately, the sand and gravel company’s contract with the Army Corps of Engineers permits them to mine the area and then leave it as ponds and the like. They have no obligation to restore the ground in any fashion, so the ground that it has dug up is forever destroyed.

The only good news is that we are being told that the sand and gravel company is not finding the concentration of gravel that it hoped to find there. Hopefully, that will mean that they will terminate their mining operations early and without destroying as much of the battlefield as they had originally intended to dig up. We don’t know this for certain, but it is what we’re hearing. Let us hope that that’s true.

I will keep everyone posted as to our progress.