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The pewter Revolutionary cross-belt buckle belonged to a member of the Cold Stream Guard regiment, and there are only two like it in the world.

One is in a museum in London. The other? It was dug up in the 1980s next to the Hedges Apartments on Lawndale, near the old Winn-Dixie, by a prospector with a metal detector.

With every new strip mall that's gone up north of town, every condo and million-dollar home, it's become a little more difficult to salvage the priceless remnants of what occurred in these forests on March 15, 1781. It was a battle so fierce, so costly that it set the stage for the British surrender that fall, and the victory of the world's first democracy.

By contrast, the campaign by Battle of Guilford Courthouse preservationists to hold the line against encroaching sprawl has been as patient and painstaking an endeavor as restoring the lost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Poised this week to close the deal on another key piece, a prime parcel along Battleground Avenue that appeared destined for commercial development, directors of a nonprofit land trust are declaring a victory of their own.

"We have made unbelievable progress," Frank Mascia, president of Guilford Battleground Co., said Tuesday during a presentation at the park. "This is sacred land where men fought and sacrificed their lives. We are all stewards of this land."

Envisioning a 500-acre historic and recreational preserve linked by electric trams, National Parks superintendent Chuck Cranfield unveiled a plan to close the parks to private vehicles and instead shuttle visitors between five areas: the Battleground memorial, Jaycee Park, Country Park, the Natural Science Center and Tannenbaum Park, which the budget-strapped city is transferring to the federal government.

Squeezed between dwindling parks budgets and real estate prices that had been escalating, the nonprofit GBC has turned increasingly to family foundations for support. Most of all, the trust needs the help of the public, either through "Patriot" memberships starting at $35, or through an extra $20 a year to the DMV for a "Revolutionary" N.C. license plate (with Gen. Greene on his horse).

The cliche, of course, is that natives are the last ones to see their own sights. But with a revamped Natural Science Center, new plans for Country Park, and the beauty and peace of Guilford Battleground, the nation's first military park, there are no reasons to stay away.

Honoring a young soldier

On the subject of sacrifice, it was three years ago this week that Lance Cpl. Andrew David Russoli, a 21-year-old Marine and Northwest High grad, was killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near his Humvee in Nasser Wa Salaam, Iraq.

In his memory, the Oak Ridge Fire and Rescue Co. has launched a fund that will award a $2,500 scholarship each year to a firefighter or child of the company.

"Andrew had many friends in this organization, and I am certain he would have joined at the end of his tour with the Marines," his father wrote friends this week. "He had seen enough death in Iraq and wanted to devote the rest of his life to saving lives."

Write: Strength and Honor Fund, c/o Oak Ridge Fire and Rescue, 8325 Linville Road, Oak Ridge, NC, 27310.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-com