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Editorial
The Toledo Blade (Toledo, OH)
09-03-96
The notion of establishing a Fallen Timbers battlefield site has gained an important ally. Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine has declared his support for the creation of such a site affiliated with the National Park Service. He will offer legislation authorizing the move in Congress this session, and a companion bill will be introduced in the House by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Toledo Democrat, who also has expressed strong support for such a move.
That does not mean a flood of dollars from a cash-strapped federal government -- land acquisition funds for national parks have virtually dried up -- but it does mean that the cause of saving the battlefield, owned by the city of Toledo, from commercial encroachment is gaining.
"We've got enough land in this country for shopping malls. There's plenty of land for that, but there is only one battlefield that has this much significance to the state of Ohio and the nation," Senator DeWine said during a recent tour of the battlefield.
One thing is clear. The site has been clearly identified as a historic site by local, state, and federal agencies. The National Park Service affiliation would help immeasurably in developing the battlefield as an interpretive site, and turn the partly wooded soybean field into a major regional recreation asset.
City of Toledo officials have been fairly close-mouthed about what they would like this site to become -- not a bad policy when one is trying to peddle a piece of truly historic ground at an inflated price at two or three times anything resembling a fair value. They know the only feasible buyer at this point is an agency whose agenda is preservation of the land.
Mayor Carty Finkbeiner could yet become one of the heroes of this preservation effort if he were to take decisive steps to guarantee the integrity of the battlefield site now, and cooperate with other political leaders in the region to see how such a park might be financed so that the city is fairly compensated for its investment. Nobody is going to give credit to a mayor who comes around to the cause slowly and grudgingly.
Passage of a Fallen Timbers national affiliated battlefield park bill probably won't happen in this session of Congress, given the shortage of the time between now and the fall campaign. It is more likely that action would be taken in the next Congress.
This region was between 1790 and 1815 the most historically important part of Ohio. It was the fulcrum of the struggle by the young American republic to assert its frontiers, the British trying to preserve their hold on Detroit and other frontier bases, and the aboriginal Americans trying to save their homes and hunting grounds from the advancing waves of European pioneers.
This is historic ground, a site that Gen. Dave Palmer, author of a book on Gen. Anthony Wayne's military campaign in 1794 that culminated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, has compared in importance with Yorktown and Gettysburg.
This historic site is not an appropriate location for "custard's last stand" or any other form of commercialization -- as Senator DeWine has appropriately recognized.
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