a veteran historian but a newcomer to the superintendent ranks. In those
happy days, the park was, like most National Park Service areas, an island in
the community, and there were no concerns about burgeoning suburbia.

In November 1958, with the Civil War centennial approaching and the
National Park Service in the midst of its Mission 66 program to update the
parks' infrastructure, I was assigned to the Southeast Region as regional
research historian in response to a request by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant III,
chairman of the National Civil War Centennial Commission. Grant asked
the NPS to give priority to completing the programmed Mission 66 devel-
opment at the Civil War battlefield parks by the one-hundredth anniversary
of the battle commemorated. Most of the Service's Civil War parks, includ-
ing Manassas, were then in the Southeast Region. The centennial for the
Manassas park would be 21 July 1961.

Superintendent Wilshin had focused his energies on a major reenact-
ment of the first battle of Manassas, and planning for Mission 66 devel-
opment either lagged or was postponed in favor of the reenactment. Key
managers in the Southeast Regional Office and in Washington did not ap-
preciate how the superintendent allocated the park's resources.

The reenactment took place, after many vexing problems were mas-
tered, as scheduled. The day was hot, dusty, and humid, with large crowds
and traffic jams. Insofar as senior management was concerned, the reenact-
ment was of no permanent benefit to the park, the Park Service, or the
nation. Because of these views and the damage done to the landscape, the
Service made an important policy decision: there would be no more reen-
actments on national park lands.

The second phase of my experience with Manassas National Battlefield
Park began in April 1966 when I came to Washington as a NPS staff histo-
rian in the History Division, specializing in the Civil War and nineteenth-
and twentieth-century political history. In this position I experienced the
park from a closer perspective. I came to know the park, its superinten-
dents, its interpretive personnel, and certain of its problems and needs.

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, the park and its staff and friends be-
came mired in controversy -- both on the local level and in the Washing-
ton area -- because of external threats to the park's preservation and its in-
terpretive mission. The "third" and "fourth" battles of Manassas ensued.
Third Manassas was fought over the location of Interstate 66. Initial plans
by the Bureau of Public Roads and the Virginia Department of Highways
called for locating the four-lane limited access highway through the core of
the park on a route adjacent to and parallel to Route 29. Superintendent

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