Lee Memorial Park

Lee Memorial Park covers about 300 acres along the southern edge of Petersburg, Virginia, wrapped around Willcox Lake, a reservoir created around 1895. The city set aside 462 acres in 1921 and developed roads, trails, a swimming area with bathhouse, picnic areas and ballfields. These facilities were segregated, and African Americans were excluded. During the Depression, the Petersburg Garden Club, led by Mrs. Donald Claiborne Holden, secured Works Progress Administration funding for a wildflower and bird sanctuary. From December 1935, crews of unemployed African-American women, working under white supervisors, cleared ravines, planted flowers, trees and shrubs, and cut trails across about 25 acres. Funding ended in 1940. The park also preserves a stretch of the Confederate Dimmock Line earthworks, which includes sites of Fort Walker and Battery Pegram. Contributing features include the superintendent's house, the bathhouse, the lake, the earthworks, the trail system and the sanctuary landscape. Portions were later sold for development.