Conflict On 'Back Burner' At Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park (FL)
By MARGIE MENZEL - NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA • 12 HOURS AGO
The Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park was the center of an outcry in late 2013, when the state held a hearing on a plan to place a Union memorial there ...
In December 2013, the state Department of Environmental Protection held a public hearing that drew 300 irate Floridians to Lake City. The department had received a proposal from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War to add a Union monument to the state park at Olustee, which DEP oversees. Agency officials had processed the request, scheduled the public hearing on where to place the marker — a routine step — and were shocked by the outcry that followed.
The anger was partly due to the department's plan to put the Union marker on three acres given to the state by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909. The site is considered sacred by the many local descendants of those who died there. The site is also Florida's first state park, which the United Daughters of the Confederacy administered until 1949, when the state took over ...
Meanwhile, the Department of Environmental Protection has no immediate plans to touch the matter. Department spokesman Jason Mahon wrote in an email, "The potential of a Union monument at Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park as well as any other updates at the park will be addressed when the park's Unit Management Plan is updated in 2017" ...
http://news.wjct.org/post/conflict-back-burner-olustee-battlefield-historic-state-park
