ORANGE, Va. (AP) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it has selected a new site for a Supercenter that initially was to be built near where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first met in battle.

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Monday's announcement decision was hailed by preservation groups, who convinced the world's largest retailer to abandon its plans to build near the Wilderness Battlefield in Locust Grove. The settlement was announced in January as the dispute was headed to trial.

Hundreds of historians had opposed the store.

Wal-Mart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., had first proposed building the store within a cannonball's shot of the battlefield. The site is considered by historians as a critical and especially bloody chapter in the Civil War.

The new site is a commercially zoned property 3 miles from the battlefield.