About The Civil War Trust
The
Civil War Trust was a private, non-profit organization
started in 1991 to protect and preserve our nation's
most important Civil War battlefield sites. In November
1999, The Civil War Trust merged with the Association
for the Preservation of Civil War Sites to form the
Civil War Preservation Trust.
The Civil War Trust helped save 6,700 acres of land in the eight years of its existence and conducted education and heritage tourism programs to educate the public about the significance of the war and the vital importance of battlefield preservation.
The Origins of The Civil War Trust
In 1988, a grassroots campaign was begun to prevent the development of a shopping mall on the Bull Run Battlefield in Manassas, Virginia. Eventually, the federal government stepped in to save this land by purchasing it for an exceptionally high price of more than $250,000 per acre. This emergency land purchase was a watershed event in battlefield preservation, and the campaign that led to it demonstrated that there was a great deal of support for battlefield preservation among both the general population and their congressional representatives. Preservation enthusiasts pointed out that there were many important Civil War sites around the nation that needed preservation. Unfortunately the Manassas affair also showed that government purchases were not going to be a cost-effective solution.
An alternative was to create a non-profit foundation to raise private funds for battlefield protection. One year after the American Battlefield Protection Program was created within the Department of the Interior in 1990, a private non-profit called the American Battlefield Protection Foundation was created to implement cost-effective preservation strategies to save threatened historic landscapes. Within a few short years, the American Battlefield Protection Foundation became known as The Civil War Trust.