Back to Old Virginia Civil War Trails Feature 226 Battlefields, Parks, Historic Sites

All your life, you’ve heard about what happened on Civil War battlefields. You know the generals’ names and the role the battles played in the war.
But now that you’re here, whether you’re standing on the rolling green hills of Manassas or the hallowed grounds of Fredericksburg and Petersburg, you realize you didn’t know much of what happened there after all.
Civil War travel is big business, and perhaps no state has benefitted more than Virginia, with 226 sites promoted through the Virginia Civil War Trails.
Almost 6 million people visit a Civil War site in Virginia each year.
The trails make visiting sites like Appomattox, Fredericksburg, Petersburg and Manassas more easily accessible for tourists, but it also leads to many lesser known sites with Civil War significance, such as Toms Brook in Shenandoah County, the site of an Oct. 9, 1864 battle.
Books such as The Conservation Fund’s “The Civil War Battlefield Guide,” available at Books-A-Million, provide handy insight into the battles, but detailed driving brochures, which lead tourists to all major and minor sites, are available for each region:
Lee’s Retreat
Lee vs. Grant: The Overland Campaign
The 1862 Peninsula Campaign
Northern Virginia
Shenandoah Valley Campaigns
A good place to start in Virginia is where the site of the first major battle of the Civil War – in Manassas. The two battles fought at Manassas Junction, on July 18, 1861 and Aug. 28-30, 1862, are memorialized at the 5,000-acre Manassas National Battlefield Park. The area’s key railroad junction and its proximity to Washington made Manassas a strategic location during the Civil War.
The first battle claimed 900 combined Confederate and Union lives; 3,300 died in the second battle.
Within 5 miles of the battlefield in downtown Manassas is the Manassas Museum, which features exhibits that provide a glimpse of the area’s rich history, ranging from prehistoric tools and Victorian costumes to Civil War uniforms and artifacts and railroad memorabilia.
The Northern Virginia phase opened in May 1998 and also features the defenses of Washington, the prelude to Gettysburg and the exploits of Col. John S. Mosby, the “Grey Ghost of the Confederacy.”
Lee’s Retreat is marked with radio transmitters and interpretive signs at 26 sites from Petersburg to Appomattox that trace the war’s final days.
When the 10-month siege at Petersburg, the longest siege of any American city, ended, Confederate General Robert E. Lee retreated, with Union General Ulysses S. Grant in pursuit, across Southside, Va., to the ultimate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.
Petersburg and Fredericksburg are two of 51 sites on the “Lee vs. Grant – The Overland Campaign” trail, which marks the 1864 final campaign between Lee and Grant that eventually led to the fall of the Confederate capital in Richmond.
The Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania National Military Park features Lee’s battles at Fredericksburg, as well as pivotal battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse and Chancellorsville, where Stonewall Jackson was mistakenly shot and mortally wounded by his own troops.
When the Virginia Civil War Trails’ third phase opened in June 1997, it added an additional 36 sites that feature the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. The trail begins at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula and follows the Union army’s advance to the gates of Richmond.
The latest trail, the Shenandoah Valley Campaigns, interprets the pivotal and devastating Valley Campaigns of 1862 and 1864. Interpretive stops retrace Jackson’s campaign, as well as the destruction wrought upon the region in the campaigns of 1864.
For more information, contact the Virginia Civil War Trails, 1-888-CIVIL-WAR, or www.virginia.org, or the Prince William County/Manassas Conference and Visitors Bureau, (701) 792-4254.