Chief of interpretation Chris Bryce said Saturday that park officials are in the process of assessing the damage. He said there were a number of places where the ground had been dug up earlier this week.
Petersburg
National Battlefield is a 2,700-acre park, about 26 miles south of
Richmond, that marks where more than 1,000 Union and Confederate
soldiers died fighting during the Siege of Petersburg 151 years ago.
There
are a number of locations on the battlefield where someone has gone in
and actually dug and upturned the soil by several inches, Bryce said.
Unfortunately,
he said, people will sometimes go into national parks or to
battlefields and dig up relics in search of buttons from uniforms,
bullets, artillery shells and other historic items. They often sell
their loot online because there is a market for Civil War relics.
"When
this happens, it's not just a loss for Petersburg National Battlefield,
it's a loss for the American people," he said. The timing of the
looting could not have been worse, he said, because it comes right
before Memorial Day. "And now we're having to deal with a situation
where someone has essentially come in and has desecrated the park on the
eve of a very important weekend for us in terms of commemoration."
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