Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Cultural Landscape Report, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, National Park Service

Hiatt, John

Both field study and a thorough examination of the historical record are essential prerequisites to any attempt to devise a comprehensive set of treatment recommendations. Such research enables investigators to peel back and scrutinize the layers of a given landscape, affording a better understanding of the complex relationship between its continuity and change over time. Consequently, the site history section of this report charts the evolution of the landscape that presently constitutes Guilford Courthouse National Military Park through all of its development stages specifically documenting and accumulation, retention, modification, and/or eradication of integral natural and cultural resources. The site history also necessarily places past developments and certain landscape treatments into broader historical and cultural contexts in order to establish their levels of significance. An evaluation of the park’s existing conditions follows the site history, providing the baseline from which to assess how closely the contemporary landscape corresponds to the scene at the time of the battle in 1781. Such analysis, in turn, makes it possible to propose recommendations for the future treatment and interpretation of the park’s landscape resources. The park’s leadership, in commissioning this report, primarily seeks guidance on how best to manage the overall landscape in relation to its battle-era features (principally the three battle lines and the historic New Garden Road). Involving a number of circulatory and interpretive issues, this is a complicated and delicate operation, especially when one considers that recent research has demonstrated that the location of the third line was misidentified during the early commemorative period. Authorities now convincingly maintain that the third line actually stood about 400 yards east of its previously interpreted position. Although the battle era constitutes the landscape’s defining period of significance, the park’s staff also acknowledges the considerable importance of Guilford’s commemorative layers and requests direction regarding their proper treatment. Of specific interest here are the component landscapes associated with the highly visible General Nathanael Greene Monument (erected 1915) and the superintendent’s residence-maintenance complex (established during the Park Development Era of the 1930s). Time constraints precluded an exhaustive examination of the historical record; nevertheless, this CLR rests on a strong foundation of primary sources. Including both published and unpublished materials, the primary sources utilized herein take the form of participant accounts of the battle, travel narratives, newspaper articles various land records, colonial and state records, period maps, and government documents (statutes, bills, and acts). GUCO’s own extensive, if not diffuse, files greatly inform the content of this report as well. In addition to the original hardcopy files, the park also owns microfilm copies of selected GUCO records reposited at the National Archives.

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Cultural Landscape Report, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, National Park Service

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