140 Rodenbaugh Drive                                                 175 Rodenbaugh Drive

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen has agreed to participate in clearing a building from an 11-acre tract of land off North Frontage Road that is expected to be donated to the Vicksburg National Military Park in 2016.

According to a letter from Bess Averett, executive director of the Friends of the Vicksburg National Military Park and Campaign, the foundation, working with the Civil War Trust, acquired the property for $720,000 using a combination of $360,000 in private funds and a $360,000 American Battlefield Protection Program Land and Water Protection Fund Grant.

Friends wants to restore the land and donate it to the park as part of its centennial observance in 2016.

Averett said Tuesday the property includes four parcels of land bordered by North Frontage Road and Old Highway 27, and is south of the Iowa Monument in the park and near the Railroad Redoubt. She said a house at 140 Rodenbaugh Drive, which is on the property, and a nearby house at 175 Rodenbaugh Drive which is owned by the park, will be demolished. Rodenbaugh Drive runs north off North Frontage Road and dead-ends in the park.

Fordice Construction Co., she said, will demolish the buildings as an in-kind donation. The board Monday approved removing the debris from the two homes after they are demolished as part of the process to get land ready for donation.

“We partnered with the Civil War Trust to get private donations, and we were able to get a grant through the Battlefield Protection Act to buy the land,” Averett said. “Because the Civil War Trust only donates ‘clean’ land, the house has to be demolished in order to restore the land so it can be donated to the park.”

She said the building, the foundation and the driveway will be removed and the site re-sodded and stabilized to have the land ready to donate to the park. Friends expects to have the land ready to be donated to the National Military Park in early 2016.

The Railroad Redoubt was a Confederate fortification built to protect the Southern Railroad of Mississippi, which was a vital entrance to Vicksburg at the time.

Union infantry forces attacked the redoubt, a square fortification on May 22, 1863, and fierce fighting ensued with the Union forces withdrawing with heavy loses as darkness fell. The Union’s failure to capture the redoubt and other fortifications along the Confederate line resulted in the siege of Vicksburg.