Years of research by members of the Brandywine Battlefield Task Force have resulted in a just released plan for the 35,000-acre battlefield area.
Task Force Chairman Jeannine Speirs, a senior community planner for the Chester County Planning Commission, said it would take decades — 20-30 years — to implement everything in the plan. However, within the next five years she thinks it’s possible to develop something specific for that part of the battlefield in Chadds Ford Township.
One of the primary recommendations was to create specific plans for 13 strategic landscapes that are still intact enough to tell the story of the September 1777 Battle of Brandywine. One of those landscapes involves the Brandywine Battlefield Park and Chadds Ford Village.
“Chadds Ford Township could work with [the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation], work with the park, work with Brandywine Conservancy to somehow facilitate access from the Brandywine Battlefield Park to the Chadds Ford Township building to the Harvey Run Trail that’s being developed behind the building to the Brandywine Conservancy Trail that leads to the Chadds Ford Historical Society,” Speirs said.
It is, however, up to the various municipalities to implement the specifics of the plan as recommended by the task force.
The task force has been working on plan since August 2011 and has now submitted it to the American Battlefield Protection Program. The plan will be on the task force’s Web site within about a month and the Brandywine Conservancy will be putting it on its Greenway Web site within the year, Speirs said.
The entire battlefield encompasses includes 15 municipalities and is defined as the total area where major combat took place, but also areas of skirmishes, encampments and troop movements.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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