The boom in cloud computing and AI has resulted in developers building new data centers at a pace that local zoning boards and state infrastructure planners often struggle to match. Northern Virginia remains a global hub because it already has dense fiber routes, major network interconnections, and a mature utility ecosystem, which makes nearby land extraordinarily valuable for data center campuses.
That pressure has started to spill outward from established corridors and into places where the land is not only rural, but historically freighted, including landscapes tied to major Civil War battles.
The flashpoint is that data centers do not look or behave like ordinary commercial development. They arrive as large industrial buildings, typically paired with security fencing, substations, transmission corridors, and backup generator yards.
Even when a project is technically “near” a battlefield rather than inside a park boundary, opponents argue that the experience of a historic landscape depends on what a visitor can see and hear from key interpretive sites, not on a property line.
Manassas And The Prince William Digital Gateway Controversy
The most prominent recent example is the proposed Prince William Digital Gateway in Prince William County, Virginia, which would allow a massive data center campus near Manassas National Battlefield Park. Preservation groups and local residents have argued that this development would transform the setting around a nationally significant battlefield into an industrial corridor, changing the viewshed and soundscape that the park uses to interpret the fighting and the terrain.
The fight has not been limited to public comment. In August 2025, a circuit court judge voided the county’s rezoning approval tied to the project after homeowners challenged the adequacy of public notice and process, effectively halting the rezoning at that moment and setting up continued litigation and political conflict over what comes next.
Wilderness Battlefield And The Spread Beyond The Data Center Core
Farther south, the debate has extended to the Wilderness area near Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, where opponents have challenged a mega-development proposal that includes large-scale data center components. Preservation advocates have described this as a threat not only to specific historic sites, but to the broader gateway landscape that frames how the public understands the campaign and the terrain.
Litigation over these proposals continues, and courts have allowed key suits to proceed, which underscores that the conflict is not only aesthetic. These disputes often turn on zoning, procedural compliance, environmental review, and whether local decision makers adequately considered impacts to historic resources and community infrastructure.
What Opponents Say Is Being Lost
Opponents tend to describe the harm in terms of how a battlefield landscape functions in real life, not just how it looks on a zoning map. They argue that large industrial buildings and utility infrastructure would intrude on the historic viewshed that parks and preservation groups treat as part of the resource itself, meaning the surrounding terrain would no longer read as open ground that helps visitors understand the battle.
They also point to operational impacts that extend beyond aesthetics. Preservation and conservation groups have cited modeling and analysis suggesting that data center buildout and associated road changes could raise noise levels in and around Manassas sites in ways that would degrade visitor experience and the ability of park staff to interpret the battlefield.
Environmental concerns come up just as often because these campuses increase impervious surface area and can drive additional stormwater runoff and pollution into local waterways. Critics argue that those changes reshape the surrounding landscape over time, even if the core battlefield tract remains formally protected.
Finally, nearby residents often frame the fight as a quality-of-life and infrastructure question. They describe round-the-clock industrial hum, light and noise impacts, and the construction and utility footprint that can follow a major data center corridor into previously rural areas.
Why Supporters Still Want Them
Local officials who favor data center development tend to focus on fiscal stability. Data centers can generate significant local revenue through taxes on equipment and business property, and counties facing growth pressures see them as a way to fund schools and services without adding large numbers of new residential students. That logic is part of why rezoning fights become so intense: one side sees an industrial intrusion into a historic landscape, while the other sees a rare chance to capture a high-value tax base.
The Resource Question That Keeps Escalating
Even when a project is not physically on a battlefield tract, the infrastructure to support it can be region-shaping. Opponents point to power lines, substations, and water withdrawals as off-site impacts that expand the footprint beyond the building envelope.
A conservation fact sheet has argued that data centers can strain energy and water systems and impose external costs on nearby communities, which becomes politically explosive when those communities also see themselves as stewards of historic ground.
Water is increasingly central to the dispute because many large facilities use water-intensive cooling, and the scale of AI-driven growth can amplify consumption. A policy analysis of data center water use has described large facilities drawing quantities that can resemble municipal-scale demand, which forces communities to think about resilience, drought risk, and who bears the cost of expansions to water infrastructure.
Keeping Memory In The Landscape
This fight is not really about whether society needs data centers. It is about whether the fastest-growing infrastructure category in the country should be allowed to treat historically significant landscapes as just another site opportunity. The anger comes from a sense that once a battlefield’s setting is industrialized, no later donation, buffer, or interpretive kiosk can restore the underlying experience of place.
