Sudley Church in Manassas battlefield worries Bi-County Parkway plan will doom its future But that steady stream of passersby helps keep the church viable, Mitchell said. "If they close this road to through traffic," he said, "we would become invisible." Besides, he added, if the ultimate goal is historic preservation, "we've been here longer than the battlefield has." "We're proud of our history," he said. But we don't want to become a museum. Northern Virginia's growth The road debate is one of many local skirmishes over the proposed Bi-County Parkway, which would cut a north-south path through Prince William and Loudoun counties and has whipped up intense debate over how best to manage the rapid growth in Northern Virginia. Clark agreed to support the parkway plan if that meant that Route 234, long known as Sudley Road, would no longer be a commuter artery running through the park. The Bi-County Parkway provides an opportunity - one that he says is increasingly rare as development continues to crowd around the park - to shut down a major part of the problem. But this fight is not so much about roads as it is about history and how to preserve it. Both battles of Manassas were defining moments of the Civil War. With the country so politically polarized, Clark said, the lessons of history - both the fight and the reconciliation - are particularly resonant. "His mission is to save the battlefield," Mitchell said of Clark. But my mission is to save the church. And if he gets what he wants, we're going to be a casualty. The original church was built in the 19th century. The current gray wooden church, the third built on the site, has about 700 members, drawing 150 or so to services on a typical Sunday. "There's a lot of legend, a lot of history wrapped up around this little church," said Deb Angerman, the youth pastor. One of the stories, documented in old letters and newspapers, goes something like this: On a hot Sunday in July 1861, a young Union soldier from New Hampshire named John Rice was shot and carried by comrades toward the church, which doctors had turned into a field hospital, throwing pews outside and using the Communion table for crude surgeries. But the soldiers left Rice lying unconscious next to a fence when Confederate forces attacked, and they fled.