The Foundation was created by a small group of Shenandoah Valley preservationists who learned that a 158-acre tract of land in the core area of the 1864 battlefield (next to Belle Grove, an 18th-Century plantation house owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation) was slated to become an industrial park. The Foundation bought the 158 acres for $450,000, all of which was borrowed, in 1989. In 1996, after raising nearly three quarters of a million dollars in principal and interest, the Foundation retired the debt and placed the land under a perpetual preservation easement to ensure that it can never be divided or developed. It became the first battlefield easement to be held by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.