As the title asked, what battlefields have you been to? I’m speaking specifically about battlefields that have been maintained in some way to preserve its historical context. Feel free to mention other battlefields that have not been maintained as battlefields at the end of your posts (I know you are going to anyway). Some I visited during staff rides. A staff ride is an Army tradition where a unit’s leadership will visit a battlefield and discuss strategy and history. Usually junior officers are assigned different aspects of the battle to brief to the group.
What if anything did you get out of your visit? Did you enjoy it? Did it educate you? Any other thoughts on the experience?
Battlefields I’ve been to:
Yorktown: probably the one I learned the most from visiting . I knew about the battle but didn’t have a real feel for what happened and why until I was on the ground seeing it.
Gettysburg: this was a staff ride mostly briefed by one officer that had an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. There is so much to see and learn about there. I would love to go back and explore.
Antietam: very interesting because I had little knowledge of the battle before I went. I did learn a lot of the staff ride and the park rangers let us have some extra access.
Princeton: a relatively small battlefield. As with the others being able to walk the terrain greatly enhances your understanding of what happened.
Monmouth: when I was a kid I went to a reenactment. I liked seeing the cannon firing. I don’t remember much else.
As for other non-maintained battlefields there have been quite a few. Being from New Jersey I’ve seen many historical markers for various skirmishes. George Washington slept in my hometown. Like the Europeans on this board I’ve been to many places that were heavily damaged in WWI. My old hanger still had bullet holes from being straffed and there were abandoned bunkers on base. I stood in the cathedral courtyard where the famous tank duel happened in Koln. In Baghdad I worked in a few buildings with giant JDAM shaped holes in them.
I was thinking I hadn’t been to any, but then I realized that of course I have.
There’s Glorieta Pass, where Union forces stopped Confederate troops from breaking through to Colorado.
There are also a number of sites associated with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when members of many pueblos drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico so thoroughly that they didn’t return for 12 years, and the reconquest when they did come back. Most of the pivotal moments of those events happened in Santa Fe, which of course has a lot of other history.
There are a lot of other sites where the Pueblo people fought the Spanish, but most of them might be better described as “sites of massacres” rather than “battlefields”.
I steamed through the Surigao Straits once, in the daylight not at night as when the last “capping the T” was done. It’s a beautiful place in the tropics.
I went to Gettysburg as a teenager, and it was good, but I didn’t appreciate it. I’d like to go back and visit it and some other Civil War battle sites now that I’ve learned about what happened and why, and how the country was torn apart. It seems more appropriate given the times we live in today.
I lived in Chattanooga TN for a while, and the Chickamauga Battlefield is just over the state line. They have lovely trails in the woods surrounding the main sites, and I would trailer my horse down to ride there fairly frequently. Even though we couldn’t ride the whole park there were plenty of historic markers all through the trails. It was eerie, sometimes, to stand in those quiet woods and imagine the mayhem occurring so many years ago.
Then there was this, on occasion:
The main buildings and museum had really good displays and information, as I remember. I’m not a Civil War student or a battle aficionado, but it was interesting all the same.
I live about 20 minutes away from Gettysburg. I have taken friends and relatives there so many times that I could probably work as a tour guide.
We (Mrs. Geek and I) have also been to Fort McHenry and Harper’s Ferry.
We have been waiting to go to Antietam for them to finish the new museum and visitor’s center. They finished the building late last year, but the building has humidity and leak issues and all of the historic artifacts have been removed from display for now. We will probably wait for that to get resolved before taking a trip there.
The way that they teach history in school is horrible, and I had absolutely no interest in anything historic until long after high school. Now I find it all quite interesting. I thought maybe it was just me and changing tastes or whatever, but then I looked at a recent history book and was amazed at how mind-numbingly boring it was to read. It’s almost like they go out of their way to make it completely un-interesting.
The Plains of Abraham in Quebec City: the location of the Battle of Quebec (1759), which resulted in the British conquest of French Canada. It’s now like a big park, so mostly lawn, but there is as a minimum one reminder of the general period in history, a Martello Tower.
The Culloden Battlefield in the Scottish Highlands: the site of the Battle of Culloden Moor (1746), the last pitched battle on British soil It has a visitors’ center. I certainly found it interesting and educational, but at the same time a bit gloomy. I much preferred getting outside afterward on the actual battlefield. I played my bagpipes under the memorial cairn. There was a lot of fragrant heather growing everywhere.
Chlum and Sviby - villages near the Czech city of Hradec Králové: the general area was the site of the Battle of Koeniggraetz (1866), the largest battle ever fought on Czech soil. It was fought between Austria and Saxony on one side and Prussia on the other, and was a very important battle in European history. It realigned the powers in central Europe, resulting in Prussian hegemony over most German states, the creation of the German Empire, the reorganization of the Austrian Empire into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and thus leading up to World War I and World War II. In Chlum there is a museum / visitors’ center; otherwise, this area is beautiful, with rolling hills and woods. One would never think of the carnage that took place there once, were it not for various cenotaphs commemorating the battle. This area is intimately known to me, as I do battle reenactment (I go as a Saxon gunner). The annual reenactment of the Battle of Koeniggraetz is the highlight of my year.
I’ve also been to other historic battlefields around the Czech Republic, which are connected with the Hussite, Thirty Years, Seven Years, and Napoleonic Wars, including some of the relevant reenactments. I was once at the annual reenactment of the Battle of Austerlitz at Slavkov not far from Brno, for example. A lot of my friends are from the reenactment community - this is a popular hobby in the Czech Republic.
Grandma and Grandpa took me and my cousin (roughly the same age) to Washington and NYC back in the day, and on the way we went through Gettysburg. I was a lad of ten at the time, and it’s been 43 years, but I still have fond memories of it. I remember being moved, even as a 10-year-old.
It’s not unlikely, though I don’t remember specifically one way or the other, that I’ve been to, through, or near (viz, within a few hundred meters) of the battlefields of Chickamagua and/or Shiloh.
I live about 40 miles from the site of the Battle of Pilot Knob (Missouri), a very minor skirmish early in the Civil War. I’ve been to the town a few times, and I’ve eaten a meal at a restaurant within (or near) the site, but I can’t say for certain that I’ve actually been on the grounds of the battlefield. Maybe, maybe not.
Oh, and I’ve been to Atlanta, wasn’t the whole city the site of a battle, in a manner of speaking? (Although I suppose the same could be said of London, Paris, Cologne, etc., and I’ve been to those cities, and other European ones that likely saw action during WWI and WWII.)
Arnhem is particularly important to me, as my great uncle who both me and my eldest daughter are named for (my first name and her middle name) died and is buried there.
Its particularly nice place to visit even if you just have an interest in WW2. The battlefield is now a pleasant patch of dutch countryside and woodland, cris-crossed with footpaths with memorial markers for significant events of the battle. The mansion house where the paras had their last stand is now a museum, which in recent years added a recreation of the battle in the basement (not 100% sure I agree, it’s a little disney-y but it’s quite impressive technically)
We drive there from my parents place in the UK (taking the ferry) and usually visit the WW1 battle fields as well. There is a recreated trench and museum at Ypres which is good (though often full of English school kids in school trips). It always strikes me how effed up it must have been for those that fought through WW1 and ended up back there as officers in WW2.
I’ve been to Gettysburg a couple of times. The last time we got an audio tour that did a great job, especially highlighting the northern part of the Union line.
Also went to Antietam and Fredericksburg (Burnside was a fool).
The most impressive to me, though, was the Battle of Bennington near Hoosick Falls NY. It’s a small battlefield without much to it. There’s a brass plaque describing the battle and a sign indicating from where the colonial forces attacked. But the battlefield is on the crest of a hill, a perfect defensive position, with only one road. The colonials attacked from the woods behind the encampment and routed the British.
A few years ago my husband and I went to Monocacy, a Civil War battlefield I’d never heard of near Frederick, Maryland. There was quite a lot of preservation and an excellent tour and equally good (though small) museum.
Valley Forge, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga. The Battle of the Clouds and The Battle of Paoli, probably but I don’t recall any preserved battlefield for those. You could see Valley Forge across the Great Valley from my parents house high on the ridge on the opposite side of the Valley. I can’t say how much admiration I have for the men who survived the winter there. The cold and wind can be brutal in that valley.
I’ve been to several forts but I don’t remember any of them having interpretive signs about any battles that took place there, if any.
I’ve driven through the manassas area and, while not stopping at the battlefield per se, all of the creeks, even the tiniest ones, were marked with the standard river sign that is not always accorded to the smallest creeks, and I recognized some of the names from seeing them on maps of the Bull Run battlefield.
I’ve only been to two battlefields, both Civil War battlefields. Gettysburg was amazing since there were markers everywhere of where the units were, and I really got a feel from standing on Little Round Top how formidable a position it must have been and how the artillery duel must have looked like.
The other was the site of the Battle Of Lansdowne - an English Civil War battle that is on the Cotswold Way trail. That was less impressive in person because its only monument is to the Parliamentarian Bevil Grenville who died in the battle. Looking at a topo map of Lansdown Hill is more impressive since you can tell from the steepish sides how good a position it is, while the sides in real life are obscured, at least the parts that I could see from the trail.
I’ve been to a bunch of them and a few stand out in my memory. Gettysburg because of the Electric Map and the Cyclorama, Vicksburg because of the gunboat Cairo exhibit, and Shiloh because I showed up on a rainy morning and almost had the place to myself…and it was on that visit that I bought Confederates In The Attic on a whim and discovered the works of Tony Horwitz.
Manassas, Bull Run, Harpers Ferry, The Alamo, Custer, Sand Creek, The Ardennes, Warsaw, Waterloo, Quebec. Probably others, but that’s what comes to mind.
