By CLINT SCHEMMER

This week brings a double-barreled development in the legal battle over a Walmart in the Wilderness battlefield area.

Two other U.S. groups seek to join the National Trust for Historic Preservation and six local residents in their fight to overturn Orange County's approval of a 240,000-square-foot retail development anchored by a Supercenter.

On top of that, the director of the National Park Service has weighed in, expressing that agency's support for the litigation and dismay at the Aug. 25 decision by the county supervisors.

The Park Service "is deeply concerned about the development at issue, and the NPS does not believe the County has taken actions necessary to address our concerns," NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis wrote the National Parks Conservation Association and the Civil War Preservation Trust.

It's unusual, but not unheard of, for a Park Service director to involve himself in such a land-use or legal issue, David Barna, NPS chief of public affairs, said yesterday. This is the first time that Jarvis, who became director in October, has done so, he said.

Yesterday, the NPCA and the CWPT asked Orange County Circuit Court for permission to file a friend of the court brief supporting the National Trust's pending lawsuit.

Orange County has asked the judge to dismiss the NTHP challenge, which aims to block construction of the retail center near the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20, a quarter-mile from the entrance to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

The project, Jarvis said, would directly harm the Wilderness battlefield. "Although there is some commercial development in this area already, this complex would be many times larger and transform the character of the landscape," he wrote. "Hills would be leveled and roads widened to that the Piedmont landscape would be unrecognizable."

The development would impair the park gateway's "historic rural character" and tremendously increase traffic, heightening pressure to widen Route 20--the historic Orange Turnpike--to four lanes through the park, Jarvis wrote. Route 3 would be widened as well, he said.