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By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2000; Page V03

The cavalry battles of Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville in June 1863 have stood in the historical shadow of the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the Civil War's most savage and pivotal clashes. But Fairfax County police detective Robert F. O'Neill Jr. hopes to shed light on the battles in Loudoun and Fauquier counties to help save them from obscurity and the march of development.

O'Neill is one of 33 members of a new citizens committee formed Monday by Loudoun's Board of Supervisors with the goal of protecting the areas along Route 50 where the battles took place. The committee plans to create a driving tour with roadway turnouts and detailed markers. It also hopes to encourage landowners to put their property in voluntary conservation easements to protect the historic landscape.

Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling) voted against forming the committee. He questioned whether it would lead to some type of involuntary arrangement and said "the government should encourage the private development of these historic areas."

Supervisor J. Drew Hiatt (R-Dulles) abstained, raising questions about nonresidents of Loudoun serving on a county citizens committee.

The local conflicts "were an early cog in the Gettysburg campaign," said O'Neill, author of "The Cavalry Battles of Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville: Small But Important Riots, June 10-27, 1863." He said there is a rare opportunity to preserve battlefields that have virtually been frozen in time.

"It's a very well-to-do area. The ground hasn't been broken up into small tracts and subdivided again and again. It's still easy to get a feeling for what happened out there, and that's something that's fast disappearing," he said.

The preservation effort was first proposed in "A Citizens' Strategy for Smart Growth in Loudoun County," a document prepared at the behest of board chairman-elect Scott K. York before he took office earlier this year.

"Fortunately, many open spaces still remain along the route of these cavalry battles," the report stated. "However, almost every day more of this land is being developed. If nothing is done right away, this land will be gone forever."

York (R-At Large) appointed Paul Ziluca, chairman of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, to put together the new Citizens Committee for the Historic Cavalry Battles of Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville. "There were about 10,000 cavalry troops riding through the countryside in these areas" and about 1,400 casualties, Ziluca said.

At the heart of the battles was a struggle to reach a strategic vantage point atop the Blue Ridge mountains. At the time, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was leading troops through the Shenandoah Valley west of the Blue Ridge in an aggressive push north.

Lee ordered his detachments to run a screening operation east of the Blue Ridge to prevent Union troops from reaching the top of the mountains and seeing the dust clouds that would have been a telltale sign of Lee's secret troop movements.

A succession of battles was fought, beginning in Aldie and continuing westward toward the Blue Ridge. A group of Union scouts eventually made it to the mountaintop, but only after several costly fights and delays.

Ziluca said the committee plans to pursue a three-pronged strategy, emphasizing historical exploration, land conservation and tourism. The group will launch a survey to locate and map the battlefield sites and trace the movement of troops between them. The owners of the land delineated on the maps will be asked to consider voluntarily putting their land into conservation agreements.

In his experience at the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, the largest holder of land conservation easements in the state, Ziluca said he has seen landowners take tax write-offs for placing their properties in permanent no-development arrangements. Others put their land in easements simply for the sake of history or the environment, he said.

If necessary, Ziluca said the new citizens committee may end up seeking state and federal funds to purchase easements. He said the panel's job could take five years or more to complete.

The effort has attracted Civil War buffs from throughout the region.

"Communities and development are just consuming the historical sites in Northern Virginia," said Horace Mewborn, an amateur historian who has researched the battles and has been appointed to the citizens committee. "Hopefully, it will preserve the areas these men fought and died over."

O'Neill, 44, published his book on the battles in 1994 out of a lifelong interest in Civil War history. He chose to move to the Washington area after working as a police officer in Detroit in part because of the area's proximity to historic sites.

The 24-year police veteran said he never considered himself a writer, but after publishing an article on the three battlefields in 1986, he was prodded "kicking and screaming" by friends to keep it up. The result was his book, the most complete historical account available so far of the battles. O'Neill said his historical sideline uses the same skills as his full-time job as a police investigator.

"The committee is trying to take facts that are 130 years old . . . and trying to weave a case, to develop what's truthful and what has been fogged by an older man's memory," he said. "You try to take three divergent viewpoints and come up with a coherent version of what happened."

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