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By Charles Fenyvesi
U.S.News & World Report, Aug. 7,1995
08-7-95
For 66 years, tourists, high school students and history buffs filed past the bronze statue of Gen. Anthony Wayne, flanked by a settler on one side and an Indian on the other, marking the site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near Toledo, Ohio. The 20-foot-tall monument commemorates the 1794 victory by federal troops, led by the general nicknamed "Mad," over an Indian force. Up to 100 men were killed, and historians say the battle opened for settlers the territory that is now Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.
But now an anthropology professor from nearby Heidelberg College, Michael Pratt, says that the site, owned by the Ohio Historical Society and designated a memorial park, has one small problem: It's in the wrong place. After 10 years of poring over eyewitness accounts of the battle and studying the topography of the area, Pratt last month led 150 volunteers to a soybean field that his research had pinpointed as the battlefield. They dug for two weeks, 12 hours a day, and recovered more than 450 artifacts, including fragments of weaponry, lead musket balls and buttons of brass and pewter from military uniforms.
Pratt says the finds have identified the line of fire and the positions of the two forces. He says the dig proves conclusively that the soybean field, which is about a mile from the memorial, was where the battle was fought.
The soybean field is within the boundaries of the city of Maumee, whose mayor, Steve Pauken is delighted. He calls the find "the most exciting event" in his life, and he is talking to the National Park Service and lobbying Congress to turn it into a national park.
Far less enthusiastic is Mayor Carleton Finkbeiner of Toledo, who says he is unconvinced that the diggers found the right place. He argues that since Pratt identified the location in an academic publication prior to the dig, he was "predisposed to discover what he says he discovered." Finkbeiner is calling for "a thorough, comprehensive, independent study of the whole area." He has his own candidate for the true battle site: a bluff overlooking Maumee River that is outside both cities. "But there are lots of expensive homes there," he says with a chuckle, "and I bet those people don't want to see their gardens dug up."
Perfect for a mall. As it happens, Toledo and Maumee have been feuding for years over the land around the site Pratt has now identified. With development and annexation in mind, Toledo eight years ago bought nearly 70 acres of farmland. Maumee was not aware of the purchase: a legal battle ensued, and in the end a district court rejected Toledo's annexation bid and awarded jurisdiction to Maumee.
While the debate rages over whether the soybean field was the battle site, local developer George Isaac is about to hand over a $200,000 check to Toledo for the option to build a mall on the larger chunk of its land, a 480-acre plot known as parcel A, which is adjacent to a 167-acre plot including the alleged battlefield, known as parcel B. Isaac would prefer to locate the mall on parcel B, where highway traffic is easier to control, but with the controversy over the battlefield site, he is not about to pay for that option.
Local observers see Finkbeiner, who anticipated kudos for netting the city of Toledo an expected $6 million in profit in the land deal, in trouble over parcel B. One knowledgeable source asks: "So Finkbeiner can sell parcel A, but who would want to buy a battlefield?"
"Turning the area into a national park and recognizing its historical significance is economic development," says Maumee's Pauken, who is unenthusiastic about a mall on whichever parcel.
"It will be a destination point for many, many people." He is sure that the soybean field is the true battle site. He asks, "Does anybody seriously think that Professor Pratt buried all those hundreds of musket balls there?" Pauken can't see how local people could agree to pave over the battlefield. "In our days," he says, "Turning a historic site into a parking lot just won't be allowed to happen."
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