Ah, Battlefields! Just yesterday in a meeting with the City of San Diego
(California again), a civil servant declared to me that battlefields qualify under
single-event historic significance criteria. I, on the other hand, found that
a strange thing to say since battlefields undergo long periods of
transformation and do not look anything like the actual battle today. Certainly all the
messy cannons, bodies, and burned wagons are gone. Many battlefields became
parks with lawns, facsimile cannons (often from other battlefields) and some with
perimeter fences made of battlefield artifacts. These transmogrified
battlefields assume a cultural landscape that should be considered historic under
other categories, not to mention traditional cultural properties. What do other
folks here in HISTARCH think about the potential significance of battlefields?

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.