They were once hallowed grounds where cannon smoke filled the skies and musket balls tore through blue and gray uniforms – sites of blood, brotherhood and the brutal birth of a nation.
Today, America’s most sacred battlefield sites face a different kind of invasion – one of cold, hulking mega-structures filled not with soldiers, but with servers.
Virginia is the epicenter of both the nation’s bloody past and its high-tech future, where a booming data center industry collides with a growing army of historians, battle reenactors and angry locals.
At the forefront of the storm is a jaw-dropping proposal known as the Digital Gateway in Prince William County.
Developers want to build a sprawling 2,000-acre tech campus that could include up to 37 massive data centers right next to the Manassas National Battlefield Park, where Union and Confederate troops clashed in two pivotal Civil War battles.
To the horror of military reenactors, another tech scheme threatens Wilderness Crossing in Orange County, Virginia, a 2,600-acre development plan just a musket’s shot from the Wilderness Battlefield.
That’s where Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee fought one of the war’s most chaotic and deadly engagements in May 1864.
Opponents say these plans desecrate land soaked in American blood.
A Civil War reenactment of the First Battle of Manassas, pictured, could feel very different in the shadow of a massive windowless data center
Northern Virginia is called ‘data center alley’ because it has so many of the charmless structures seen here
Among them is David Duncan, a history buff who lives near the Manassas site. He has filed lawsuits against the two developments as president of the American Battlefield Trust.
‘I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I think that west from Manassas battlefield you’d be looking at 12-story, windowless, monolithic buildings,’ Duncan told the Daily Mail.
‘People fought and died here. They died for ideals. We should respect this hallowed land.’
It’s not just Virginia. According to research group Data Center Watch, there are some 142 grassroots groups across 24 states battling the rise of these steel and concrete leviathans.
Together, they’ve delayed or derailed $64 billion worth of data center projects – a war of attrition being fought at county hearings, courtrooms and front lawns across America.
They range from history fans to environmentalists and locals who want to protect their homes from the sight of enormous server warehouses, which are often the size of football stadiums.
These centers are needed to power everything from TikTok videos and Google searches to ChatGPT queries and crypto mining. But they come with a price.
Locals complain of endless noise, eye-watering power consumption and the ugly industrial scars left on a once-idyllic countryside.
Conservationists warn of damage to local habitats, while heritage lovers argue the rush for tech profit is bulldozing the nation’s collective memory.
Rich Thomas and Brian Joiner, actors playing Confederate soldiers at a Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Manassas
Ever more data centers are needed to process the terabytes of information we use daily
Data Center Watch, a research group, says 142 grassroots groups across 24 states are winning their battles
The fury mirrors other small-town skirmishes over wind turbines and industrial farms.
But critics say data centers are in a league of their own, devouring millions of gallons of water, pumping heat into the atmosphere and gobbling up electricity – all for the sake of powering AI bots and online cat videos.
From Northern Virginia to Atlanta and now South Carolina, tensions are flaring as the enormous electricity appetite of these centers sends utility grids into meltdown.
In Ohio, one utility even tried – and failed – to force tech companies to pay more for costly upgrades, sparking a bitter row that’s far from over.
Likewise, in Peculiar, Missouri, developers at Diode Ventures promised golden returns for schools and city coffers.
Residents were less than convinced by the glossy sales pitch, fearing their community would become just another pawn in Big Tech’s relentless expansion.
Their group, Don’t Dump Data in Peculiar, swayed planners to adjust zoning rules in October 2024, effectively killing the proposal.
Developers say their schemes bring tax revenue, jobs and infrastructure to struggling regions, and point out that demand for cloud services, AI and streaming shows no sign of slowing.
Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition, a trade group that represents data center developers and operators, says the hubs are needed to support everything users do online, from online banking to storing medical records and finding out what time Superman screens at a local theater.
Global data use is only increasing, and users don’t like waiting for YouTube videos to buffer.
Mounted Union troop reenactors play out the First Battle of Manassas
The town of Davis, West Virginia, is another frontline in the battle between locals and data center builders
‘The data center industry is building out as quickly as they can to meet that growth and provide the digital services that we all rely on every day,’ Diorio told NBC.
‘So far, we’re still behind.’
As well as processing power, AI gobbles up more electricity than regular internet use.
Catering to increased demand, proposals to build data centers in lunar orbit have circulated, as have ideas for centers that feature their own nuclear energy generators to keep them humming around the clock.
Northern Virginia already hosts more than 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic, with data pulsing through facilities in Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties every second.
The booming industry has turned the region into what some call ‘data center alley’ or the Silicon Valley of the East.
As of this summer, there are plans for Virginia’s approximately 340 data centers to be joined by up to 1,200 more, according to the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group.
A report by the state legislature said that building the infrastructure to provide the necessary energy for the data center boom ‘will be very difficult to achieve’.
It also warned that regular household could get hit with heftier electricity bills.
Prince William County municipal debates about the planned data center have been fiercely contested and lasted as long as 27 hours
An energy-hungry Amazon Web Services data center in Manassas, Virginia
Mark Johnson, who chairs the Orange County Board of Supervisors, says Virginia officials must strike a balance between competing interest groups.
‘This is Virginia, every inch of Virginia is historic for one reason or another. Those of us alive today have to continue to exist and live and build,’ Johnson told The Daily Progress in May.
For those defending the nation’s battlefield heritage, this is an existential crisis.
As lawsuits mount and public opposition grows, the war between digital progress and historical preservation is heating up.
Like the battles of old, it may come down to who has the greater will – and deeper pockets – to claim victory on America’s most sacred ground.
