A dramatic effort to reclaim history
Battle Road renewal enters final phase

By Sean Patrick Lyons, Globe Staff, 8/19/2001

For most of its history, Minute Man National Historical Park seemed little
more than Minute Man National Historical Rest Stops, a haphazard collection
of purportedly historical landmarks scattered along Route 2A and accessible
only by car.

Visitors could view the site where Paul Revere was captured, for example, by
pulling over into an ice cream parlor's parking lot, which held a stone
tablet memorializing the event.

If they were tired, they could check for vacancies next door, at the aptly
named Paul Revere Motel. Perhaps there were even bargains to be had at the
Pontiac dealership across the street.

''It didn't do justice to the significance of this area,'' said Melissa
Saalfield, a park spokeswoman.

''This was fast becoming another suburban strip. Enough people finally had
the sense to stop it, and the challenge since has been to be patient enough
to reclaim history.''

More than 40 years after Congress declared the area worthy of historic
protection, that patience has paid off.

This fall, the 1,000-acre park that commemorates the 1775 skirmishes between
Colonists and the British Army that sparked the Revolutionary War will enter
the last phase of a dramatic transformation.

Park officials say they hope the renewal will evoke a truer sense of the
battlefields - military tactics of the Colonists were largely based upon the
landscape - and ultimately create a greater understanding of the nation's
journey to independence.

The centerpiece of the roughly $7 million project is the restoration of the
original Battle Road, a roughly 5-mile trail that weaves through Concord,
Lincoln, and Lexington. Colonists used the road to pursue the redcoats as
they made their bloody retreat from Concord.

Historians believe that in later years, portions of the bucolic bypass may
have helped inspire the writings of Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau.

Park officials have spent the last seven years cutting back dense forest
along the road to reveal the farms that lay there in 1775. They have
restored the homes and barns of a number of the revolutionaries and are
replanting apple orchards, using antique varieties.

In addition, workers have knocked down more than 100 structures, including a
number of comparatively garish homes - assumed by the federal government
through eminent domain - that were constructed in the first half of the last
century, when the region was experiencing its first taste of urban sprawl.

Several neighborhood streets that lay along part of Battle Road have been
torn up and replaced with the precise mixture of clay and sand that
Colonists are believed to have used to ''pave'' the road, which was once the
main thoroughfare.

Next month, 300 grazing sheep will be brought in to help maintain the
farmland.

''For the first time in decades, people will clearly be able to put
themselves on Battle Road, see the homes, see the farms, and have a
firsthand understanding of what was here,'' said Nancy Nelson, the park's
superintendent. ''Then we will have a much better opportunity to tell what
the fears and hopes and goals of our ancestors were.''

Minute Man Park - which today attracts about 1 million visitors a year - was
created in 1959 at the behest of Senator Leverett Saltonstall and US
Representative Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., after the Air Force announced plans to
bulldoze certain historic locations in order to make way for some new
barracks.

In the decades that followed, the park's focus was not so much on
interpreting the area's history as it was in buying up private properties in
which the park was designated.

Many residents were given the opportunity to move or stay in their homes
until their deaths. Less than a handful remain today.

In the late 1980s, with major portions of land acquired, officials began to
shape a plan for restoration. Historians combed through land records and
other documents to piece together what the area would have looked like at
the start of the Revolution.

''The modern intrusions have made it extremely difficult to make the park a
coherent experience, and it can be hard to feel the 18th century,'' said
Janet Malcolm, a Bentley College history professor who helped create the
renovation's master plan more than 15 years ago.

''But, now, you get a much better sense of the remarkable courage it would
have taken these militia men to engage the British army on an open
landscape,'' she said. ''You understand more than ever before that it is
really a solemn place.''

One major hurdle throughout the renovations was Route 2A, a heavily traveled
street that was constructed along portions of the original Battle Road.

Park officials and historians had hoped to reroute the road, but local
officials balked and today 2A remains - both as a major thoroughfare and as
a point of controversy between preservationists and those wishing to develop
the surrounding area.

A plan by Massport to expand commercial air service at neighboring Hanscom
Field, which local activists say would clog Route 2A and threaten the
history that surrounds it, has also created controversy, including a flurry
of lawsuits by residents.

''If major development occurs without a plan or strategy to protect the
road, ultimately the values that Congress directed the park to protect would
be destroyed,'' said Nelson.

Park officials plan to forge ahead with their plans, which this year
captured the American Society of Landscape Architects' National Merit Award
for historic rehabilitation.

Next month, bid requests will go out for work to run a small part of the
Battle Road trail through a tunnel under a street that leads to Hanscom.

''Connecting the road will be vital,'' said John Touscher, the manager for
the renovation project. ''We have to work around a lot of things like the
airport and 2A, and the tunnel will allow for an experience that will limit
those distractions.''

Park officials then plan to proceed on the last remaining rehabilitation
projects, and substantially boost their educational programs and offerings.

''It has taken a few generations, but the park is finally coming together,''
said Saalfield, the park's spokeswoman. ''What makes this place different
from many other places is that so many people can relate to this. When the
Tiananmen Square massacre happened, there were a lot of Chinese tourists who
came, because this is really the birthplace of democracy. Finally, we're
making it the hallowed ground it should be.''


This story ran on page N1 of the Boston Globe on 8/19/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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