National Park Service Awards Battlefield Protection Grants

The National Park Service recently awarded $1.2 million for 25 grants that will be used to help preserve and protect America’s significant battlefield lands. The funding from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) will support projects at more than 100 battlefields nationwide. A list of the projects is available online at https://www.nps.gov/history/hps/abpp.

The grants fund projects at endangered battlefields from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World War II, and Indian Wars. Grants were made to projects in 17 states and territories to support archeology, mapping, cultural resource survey work, documentation, planning, education, and interpretation.

Projects include underwater archeology at the Battle of the Atlantic during WWII in North Carolina; documentation of the Second Seminole War Fort Defiance and Fort Micanopy in Florida; a statewide comprehensive GIS database of Civil War sites that will include 38 battlefields in Tennessee; a preservation plan for the U.S. Dakota War of 1862 Woodlake Battlefield in Minnesota; and development of a new battlefield preservation, and planning website in Virginia for the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District.

Priority was given to the preservation of nationally significant battlefields. The majority of grants were given to battlefields listed as Priority I or II sites in the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields and the Report to Congress on the Historic Preservation of Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Sites in the United States.

Federal, state, local, and Tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions are eligible for the battlefield grants which are awarded annually. Since 1996 more than $12 million has been awarded by ABPP to help preserve significant historic battlefields associated with wars on American soil.