Civil Warriors

… in the Shenandoah Valley.

As noted in an earlier post, I spent most of July back east and spent a good deal of that time doing some battlefields. Earlier this year, my parents moved from Northern Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley and in early July my daughter Corinne and I did a two-week road trip to see them, in the course of which we worked in some battlefield tramping. Our first stop was to a place I had never been before, the Harrisonburg battlefield (my parents now live in a community west of the town known as Rawley Springs) and Turner Ashby monument. Not really a lot to see or study here, but I could see working it into a staff ride as an opportunity to discuss leadership and cavalry operations.
After Harrisonburg, we pushed south and east to Cross Keys. I had visited this battlefield before, in 2002 with my friend Charles Bowery. Our plan was to incorporate visits to the Shenandoah Valley battlefields into a two-week “Civil War in the Eastern Theater” summer staff ride we were tasked with putting together and leading at West Point, but ended up not having time to do so. I understand, though, that a recent member of the USMA faculty was able to put together a pretty effective staff ride focused on the Shenandoah Valley campaigns.

Anyway, a lot of recent interpretive work on a relatively untouched battlefield makes for a very good and interesting three-stop tour at Cross Keys. The photo above was taken at the first stop, the “Carrington Williams Interpretive Site & Kiosk”. The treeline behind Corinne and the battlefield marker marks the location of the ground on which the Confederate line was posted. The second stop on the tour is at the Ruritan (called “Union Church” in the Shenandoah Battlefield / Rockingham at War brochure and guide) and the last is at Goods Mill, where there is a little hiking trail to see the site of the fighting on the Confederate right.

From Cross Keys, of course, we headed over to Port Republic. Unlike when I was here in 2002, we did not stop at Madison Hall, but went straight over to the Coaling, where the picture above was taken. It is a really neat site, and it gives a view of just about all you need to see to understand the 9 June 1862 engagement here.

A few days later, Corinne and I were back in the car with her uncle and grandparents for a trip to McDowell, which I had never been to before. A really enjoyable trip, not the least due to the spectacular scenery between Staunton and McDowell. We did two stops, one in the very small town of McDowell and the other on top of Sitlington’s Hill, where the main fighting took place on 8 May 1862. (The photo above was taken in the town; Sitlington’s Hill is over Corinne’s left shoulder; the photo below is at the top of the hill.) The latter was reached after a pretty quick and somewhat rigorous climb up the hill on a 90O day, made the more so because Corinne reached her culminating point while in the town and insisted that I make the hike up the hill with her on my shoulders. When we got to the top we were rewarded with a neat vista and, as you can see from the photo, Corinne’s good cheer returned some. Plus, we saw a black snake near the top, which gave us something to talk about on the way down besides how hot and miserable she was.