Reading an article in the fall 2023 issue of National Parks magazine reminded me of recent events in Pullman.
The bold headline shouted “BATTLING ODDS. Fighting to protect Manassas National Battlefield park from high-tech industry at its doorstep.”
The headline caught my attention because my great-grandfather, Theodore Barber Day, fought for the Union twice on that battlefield and several others before leaving blood in Miller’s cornfield in front of the Dunker Church on the Antietam Battlefield, as it was called by the North.
He took a Confederate minie ball through a knee. Fortunately, for him and his extensive progeny, T.B. survived by virtue of refusing an amputation. Or so two orthopedic surgeons have told me after examining his medical papers.
The death rate for amputations at the knee was very high at that time. T.B. was long hospitalized, but his leg was saved and he walked with it for 64 years. With a painful limp.
The battlefield park contains the land over which the Union and Confederate armies fought two battles, one in July 1861, and the other 13 months later.
About 60,000 soldiers fought in the first major battle of the Civil War, and an estimated 150,000 in the second.
The battlefield was so close to Washington, D.C., that city folks came out in carriages to watch the first battle. Fleeing back to the capital they impeded the retreat of defeated union forces.
So what’s the connection between a Virginia battlefield and recent events in Pullman, Wash.?
Let’s start with the Manassas Battlefield … well … ah, more accurately, battles, plural. The park was established in 1940. It includes two mass burial sites and many other unknown graves of the dead.
Since 1940, the park and its supporters have fought a series of development proposals, and even the government, which wanted to route Interstate 66 through the battlefield.
This later and current fight is a proposal to turn more than 2,100 adjacent farmland into a corridor of data centers with 40-some warehouses up to 70 feet tall in which hot, noisy servers will hum away 24/7.
Let’s not concern ourselves here with the merits of both developers and opponents.
My interest is in the paradigms employed by developers, whether in Virginia or here in little ol’ Pullman.
Prince William Digital Gateway planning for the data center venture is hidden behind secrecy and refusing to answer valid questions, according to the National Parks magazine article.
The company stands accused of funding extensive PR campaigns in an attempt to engender public support, while withholding important information from the public.
Some farmers have signed contracts to sell land to Digital Gateway at $1 million an acre and an issue of national importance involving an important Civil War Memorial Park will be made by a board of county supervisors.
Here proponents of a proposed canola oil plant had their ducks all in a row and had wangled Gov. Jay Inslee to announce support for a very local project before very many Whitman County residents even knew a proposal had been made and was working its way through the approval process.
Similarly, a proposed rock pit within city limits, near Military Hill appeared to be a sure thing until Pullman citizens discovered it and mounted a campaign against it.
Both projects were defeated.
They both shared a common trait with the Manassas data center project. All three of the projects involved disregard, if not downright disrespect, for how it would impact adjacent or nearby properties and their owners.
And this, my friends, is how great damage is inflicted under the name of progress.
Day and wife, Ruth, have lived in Pullman since 1972. In 2004, he retired after 32 years as a science communicator on the Washington State University faculty.
