The bronze soldier atop the 24th Wisconsin Infantry monument at the Chickamauga Battlefield seems to be holding a stick in one hand and air in another: His rifle was stolen years ago.
All the bronze plaques commemorating battles and units at the Sherman Reservation on the far north end of Missionary Ridge are missing in action — taken by vandals for scrap metal or unique conversation pieces.
Atop Orchard Knob, two out of three soldiers who stood guard on the Maryland Monument are completely missing — the victims of vandals who pushed them off their pedestals and left them on the ground in pieces.
These are just a few of the Civil War park’s many defaced and damaged monuments.
With repair price tags from $5,000 to $1 million apiece, the memorials make up about $8.6 million of what Park Superintendent Shawn Benge says is $31 million in deferred maintenance projects at the park.
Since the deferred maintenance backlog is more than 12 times the park’s $2.5 million-a-year budget, the monument fixes could be a long time coming, according to officials.
A State of the Parks assessment published last month by the National Parks Conservation Association starkly categorizes the needs of the 18-unit park that straddles the Tennessee and Georgia state line.
“Current funding for the park is not sufficient for the protection and management of its resources,” according to “State of the Parks: Tennessee’s Civil War National Parks.”
“The Chattanooga and Chickamauga Military Park needs additional staff — especially for resource management,” the assessment states. The park’s maintenance of cultural and natural resources is only “fair,” the report states.
But with only eight full-time maintenance workers and nearly 10,000 acres, 600 monuments and thousands of plaques and markers in the park, officials say they depend heavily on volunteers and occasional donations.
“We do our best,” said Don Stephenson, the park’s facility manager.
The park got stimulus help this year from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The federal stimulus is giving $380,000 to efforts this year to repaint cast-iron plaques and fix trails and landscapes in the park. The extra money allowed the park to hire 25 temporary seasonal workers.
“It’s certainly $380,000 we wouldn’t have had,” Park Superintendent Shawn Benge said last month when the stimulus award was announced.
Generally, park officials are able to put $662,000 of the operating budget each year toward maintenance, though Mr. Benge has calculated that it would cost about $1.5 million annually to meet all the needs.
“This leaves a (yearly) gap of approximately $1.4 million,” he said.
The park usually receives between $300,000 to $700,000 in additional federal money each year to catch up its deferred maintenance, Mr. Benge said.
But the extra help still is a long way from $31 million.
HISTORICALLY CORRECT
The monument and marker fixes are especially costly because they must be historically correct, said Jim Szyjkowski, the park’s chief of resource management.
“We have to have patterns made to recast them,” he said. “Even the cannonballs must be made of the original material (lead). They can’t just be plastic or concrete.”
And the markers and monuments are historic, said Kay Parish, executive director of the Friends of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. After 1890, when the park was established and became the nation’s first military park, Civil War veterans from all over the nation returned to find their battlefield locations and commemorate them.
“A lot of people don’t realize these monuments were actually sited and placed here by the veterans themselves 100 years ago,” she said.
Today, the park is one of the most popular in the national park system, according to the National Parks Conservation Association assessment.
“Nearly a million people visit Chickamauga and Chattanooga every year,” the report states.
Mr. Benge said he hopes the park will get another $300,000 in stimulus money in coming weeks. That money may be put toward some monument repairs at Orchard Knob, officials said.
The park also benefits from friends, both individuals and the official Friends of the Park, Mr. Szyjkowski said.
A box in the visitors center holds dollars donated for monument repair, and the Friends group headed by Ms. Parish has staged several fundraisers and organized volunteer programs.
Established in 1986, the Friends group raised $250,000 in the late 1990s to help rebuild the Wilder Brigade Monument and upgrade the park’s multimedia show. The restored monument, with an interior staircase, reopened to the public in 1999.
Historical groups also help from time to time, Mr. Szyjkowski said.
A few years ago, a Minnesota historical group raised the money to repair Minnesota monuments in the park.
“We’ll always have needs,” he said.
