History
During the American Civil War, the current park was the site of the Battle of Dam No. 1, part of the Battle of Yorktown (1862). In the days prior to the battle, the Confederate forces constructed rifle pits and other earth works from which they held off the Union Army forces commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. The earth works were preserved; though overgrown with woods, they are accessible from the White Oak nature trail on the camping side of the reservoir.
In the 1960s, as Newport News grew, the city found itself taxing its water supply. The solution to the problem was to purchase several lakes in the Lee Hall area and pump the water into the city. To protect the cleanliness of the water, a watershed around the new Lee Hall Reservoir was created. The watershed was developed into Newport News Park in 1966, primarily through the efforts of City Manager Joe Biggins, who considered the development of a large park important as the city continued to grow.
Read more about this topic: Newport News Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)