| Ok, you need to click on this picture, because that small version
doesn't show it well. But start looking at the top left, the bare
clay, and follow the slope down the picture, and you'll get a sense of
the steepness and roundness of the crater. And crater is the only
word that fits - it looks like a bomb crater, or like a meteor
hit. The center of the bowl is right down to water level - I can
only imagine how much dirt has been removed from here, and why.
Maybe the property owner didn't want his land polluted by a Yankee
fort, and packed it with dynamite and blew it sky high.
It's as good an answer as any, and I take a few more pictures, kind
of stunned by what I've found. I can see a bulldozed or excavated
or demolished fort, except there is absolutely no reason to have done so
here.
I have no idea why Battery Abbot is gone. But it's gone.
I take one last shot at solving the mystery. Of course, I do it
obliquely.
I'm at the Petersburg visitor center, looking for info on Battery
Dantzler. "Oh, you need Richmond for that," says the
woman behind the counter. She calls Richmond, and in a moment she
passes it over and I'm on the phone with Bob.
He offers me a number of ways to get the info I need, and one of them
is to drop by and see him. I choose that one.
After the call ends, I'm writing down the info. I realize I
didn't get Bob's last name.
"Krick" she tells me.
I stop writing, and look up. Bob Krick. The Bob Krick? I
don't even have to say a word - she just smiles and says "It's his
son. Bob Krick Junior. The senior retired. You know, anyone who's
any sort of an aficionado knows who Bob Krick Senior is." She's
cute, she loves the Civil War, and she uses words like
"aficionado" in a sentence. Is it wrong to check for a
ring? Anyway, I go to meet Bob Krick, who is well on the way to
becoming a legend himself. I ask him what happened to Battery
Abbot, figuring if anyone knows, Richmond would. He shakes his
head. He knows about Battery Abbot. It hasn't been forgotten
in Richmond. But he doesn't know what happened to it.
Whatever it was, it managed to bypass the record keeping. It's on
private property, outside the jurisdiction of the Park Service, and
always has been, so anything could have happened. Battery Abbot is
just gone. There are many places on private property that are still
here, but they aren't protected. And they can be gone in a blink. Like
Battery Abbot. Gone |
