Lori ColemanThe Trust and its allies recently scored two legal victories to save hallowed ground at the Wilderness (pictured) and Manassas battlefields.
In the past few months, the American Battlefield Trust has celebrated two legal victories in our fight to save hallowed ground at the Manassas and Wilderness battlefields. The Prince William Digital Gateway data center complex adjacent to the Manassas Battlefield and the Wilderness Crossing mega-development each pose monumental threats. Thanks to the support of our members and local partners, these battlefields are one step closer to being free from these intrusions on historic landscapes.
At Manassas, although an appeal on the Trust’s case (which had been dismissed in demurrer hearings last fall) is still pending, a parallel suit brought by the Oak Valley Homeowners Association, which shares many of the legal arguments, succeeded at trial. Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving ruled in favor of the association’s claims that a lame duck Board of Supervisors in Prince William County improperly approved the rezoning for the data center. Those rezonings—which were approved with insufficient review of data center impacts, gave inadequate public notice, and included unlawful waivers of key analyses—were voided by the August ruling.
The Prince William Digital Gateway proposal for a massive 2,100-acre data center in Prince William County, Virginia, would be the largest single data center development on earth. Plans call for up to 37 buildings nearly 100 feet tall, with an energy demand equal to 750,000 homes—five times the number of homes in the county today. The site lies on both the core and study areas of the Manassas Battlefield, and was approved despite strong public opposition and a 27-hour hearing in December 2023.
The Trust is also celebrating another legal victory down the road in Orange County. After long and careful deliberation, the judge in the Wilderness Crossing matter advanced four of our seven counts to trial. In a 17-page opinion issued on September 16, 2025, Circuit Court Judge David B. Franzén rejected attempts by the county and developers of the project to have the case thrown out. The remaining counts challenge the rezoning as having been approved in violation of Virginia law governing rezoning processes, public hearings, and the equal taxation of land.
The Wilderness Crossing mega-development is poised to bring huge swaths of development across multiple categories—from single-family homes to data centers, distribution warehouses, and other light-industrial uses. All this would be built just across Route 3 from where 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in May 1864, in one of the most important battles of the Civil War. The Wilderness Crossing project was approved over near-unanimous public opposition in the spring of 2023. Ahead of its vote, the board ignored repeated requests from the preservation community, the National Parks Service, and others to study the impact of this largest rezoning in Orange County history.
For more information and ways to support our ongoing efforts to protect America’s hallowed grounds, visit battlefields.org.
David Duncan is president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan American Battlefield Trust, which is dedicated to preserving America’s hallowed battlegrounds—Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War—and educating the public about their significance.
