Halfway between Washington D.C. and Richmond — between two capitals at war — four of the Civil War’s most significant battles were fought within a few miles of each other over the span of 18 months. Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville. The Wilderness. Spotsylvania Court House. Together they tell a story of a war shifting, a nation changing, and 15,000 soldiers buried in a national cemetery that was established before the guns fell silent. Ranger Mary O’Neill joins The Parks Podcast to explain how to experience one of the most historically rich — and most overlooked — parks near the nation’s capital.

 

A note from Missy: National Military Parks and Battlefields have a significant role in the history of our country. I’ve driven by Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania most of my life. To go explore and hear the stories made the park come alive. And I love how the community embraces it — you see people running, biking, walking their dogs along the roads every day.

Fredericksburg Battlefield

Episode Guest

Mary O’Neil, Park Ranger
Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park

Park Stats

  • Location: Spotsylvania County and Fredericksburg, Virginia
  • Full name: Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park (75 letters — longest name in the NPS)
  • Established: February 14, 1927 (President Calvin Coolidge)
  • Size: 8,374 acres
  • Annual visitors: 756,296 (2022)
  • Hiking trails: 35+ miles
  • Four battles: Fredericksburg (Dec 1862), Chancellorsville (May 1863), The Wilderness (May 1864), Spotsylvania Court House (May 1864)
  • Fredericksburg National Cemetery: 15,000+ burials, predominantly United States soldiers
  • Chatham Manor: Union Army headquarters and hospital; donated to NPS in 1975
  • Note: Park is embedded in the Fredericksburg community — many park locations border residential and commercial areas

Show Notes & Links

Transcript

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park — Four Battles, One Story
The Parks Podcast, Episode 6 | Mary O’Neill, Park Ranger, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park
Why This Park Exists

Missy Rentz: I’m thrilled to welcome Mary O’Neill, a park ranger at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, who has worked for the National Park Service since 2015 — at Independence National Historical Park, Death Valley National Park, Saugus Ironworks National Historical Site, Joshua Tree National Park, Lowell National Historic Park, Shenandoah National Park, and Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Mary, welcome to The Parks Podcast.

Mary O’Neill: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

Missy: Let me go through some park stats. The park is located in Spotsylvania County and Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was created on February 14th, 1927, when Calvin Coolidge was president. The park is 8,374 acres, and in 2022 there were 756,296 guests. The park contains more than 35 miles of hiking trails. There were four battles that took place here — Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania — which make up the park. And it is the longest name of any unit in the national park system at 75 letters.

Mary: Yes. We usually say Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park — that’s the shortened version. Our full name is Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park. It’s actually too long to print on most publications so we shorten it. And I’ll add that the bulk of the park is in Spotsylvania County and the city of Fredericksburg, though we do have a few sites in Orange County and Caroline County as well. We encompass a large swath of land with many jurisdictions as neighbors, all tied together by the history of the Civil War battles and the impact those events had on this landscape.

Missy: One of the things that’s so fascinating when you visit the first time is how many different spots there are — all completely drivable, completely manageable in a very full day or spread over more time. Can you tell me a little bit about the park and why it was so important to add it to the national park system back in 1927?

Mary: The first real preservation and memorialization of the battlefields by the federal government happens right after the war with the establishment of the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. The National Cemetery Administration, brand new after the Civil War, was trying to resolve this question of what to do with the remains of the humans who died fighting for the United States. They started establishing these cemeteries — reinterring graves of United States soldiers from all four battles into one location. At first, that was how we memorialized the Civil War here. In the years after the war, you also have various grassroots organizations doing similar work for Confederate soldiers. Ladies Memorial Associations, mostly women, managing the reinterment of Confederate soldiers into two nearby Confederate cemeteries. And people building independent monuments — the Sedgwick Monument in Spotsylvania, the Jackson Monument in Chancellorsville. This kind of scattered memorialization happening without federal funding or organization.

Mary: We were not one of the first battlefield parks protected. Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg, Shiloh, and Chattanooga came before us. When the federal government first took charge of some of these early battlefields, they were established partly as military training grounds — a dual purpose of giving veterans of the Civil War space to remember their comrades, and running them as training areas for the military. We get transferred to the Park Service a little later. The founding mission of the park is commemoration and memorialization, which is very much what we are still doing — while also being honest about the complicated history of how these places came to be protected and what stories we tell here.

The Cemeteries and the Conflict

Missy: I found it interesting that the cemeteries and burials weren’t just North or South — that after the battles they took care of all those who had died. It was kind of beautiful that in the end, they took care of their own and the opposite, no matter what side they were from.

Mary: In a Civil War battle, whoever holds the field at the end of the day is usually the one who buried. So after the Battle of Fredericksburg, once the U.S. Army retreats back across the river, the Confederate troops deal with burials — done very quickly and haphazardly in wintertime, for logistical reasons. That said, the Fredericksburg National Cemetery is entirely United States soldiers. There are no Confederate burials there. When the U.S. government established these official military cemeteries, they very much viewed Confederate soldiers as traitors and did not want them buried alongside Union soldiers. So you have these separate organizations — the Ladies Memorial Associations — managing the reinterment of Confederate soldiers into two nearby cemeteries, one in the city of Fredericksburg and another in Spotsylvania.

The Four Battles

Missy: I was lucky enough to go on a ranger tour, and I highly recommend it — if for no other reason than to have a ranger paint a picture of what the landscape looked like then. Right now, the Fredericksburg battlefield is a suburb of Washington, D.C. By yourself, it’s hard to visualize how vulnerable the U.S. soldiers were coming up the hill from the river, with the Confederates sitting at the top with free aim.

Mary: The landscape has changed so much. Today, Fredericksburg has a huge commuter population. The park acquired land under federal control along the battlefield early on, but they didn’t make an attempt to get the entirety of the land over which these armies fought. At the time, most of that land was farmland and not heavily developed. Our official boundary reflects this piecemeal acquisition. Over the years, development in the area happened so quickly that the park really couldn’t keep up. What you have today are key locations in the battlefields protected, but huge swaths of area that were technically battlefield but aren’t part of the park. So we work on painting that picture — what would it have looked like for the soldiers?

Mary: One of the unique things about the Battle of Fredericksburg is that there was street fighting — an early form of urban combat that was not typical in the Civil War. The U.S. Army arrives across the river in November, has to wait for pontoon bridges — there’s a whole mix-up about missing pontoon bridges — and by the time the Army of the Potomac is ready to move, the Confederate Army has set up on the hills outside of Fredericksburg. It’s winter and Ambrose Burnside, the commander, just decides to go. It turns out to be a very lopsided defeat for the U.S. Army — demoralizing. Soldiers were asking themselves, why are we doing this?

Mary: The Battle of Fredericksburg takes place at this moment in the war where the war is shifting enormously. On January 1st, 1863 — just a few weeks after this battle — Lincoln moves forward with the Emancipation Proclamation, officially making emancipation a war aim and approving the enlistment of Black soldiers. Then Chancellorsville, just a few months later, kind of bookends the other side of that shifting policy. One of the interesting things about our park is that most battlefields are one battlefield. We have four. Most battlefields, you talk a little about the context before and after, and you’re done. Our four battlefields cover this really giant chunk of the war.

Missy: Fredericksburg starts December 11th, 1862 and Spotsylvania ends May 21st, 1864 — a long stretch of time in a fairly compact space.

Mary: And we’re halfway between Washington D.C. and Richmond. Why are all these battles here? Why did the armies never leave? It’s just the location. We’re between these two capitals. There’s a river right here — a natural barrier. Both armies are heavily invested in protecting their capital. That’s why we’re here.

Chatham Manor and How Parks Evolve

Missy: Chatham Manor sits on the opposite side of the river from the Fredericksburg battlefield, with an amazing view — like a castle on a hill. During the war it became a Union hospital and headquarters. It stayed private for a long time and wasn’t willed to the National Park Service until 1975, more than 50 years after the creation of the park. How do parks evolve over time through these kinds of donations?

Mary: It’s a complicated process that involves legislation and congressional boundaries. If you look at our park map, the dark green area is the park’s boundary. But then you see other areas — a light green and a very light blue — which represent the congressional authorized boundary, where the park is authorized to acquire land, and scenic easements, which are agreements with neighbors that certain types of development won’t happen. You actually can’t just donate land to the park if it’s outside the authorized boundary — there are a lot of laws governing that.

Mary: The park’s initial land acquisitions were heavily Confederate in terms of the lines of battle the park controlled. That actually influences things like the driving tours — you can see it in how they tend to follow Confederate battle lines more than U.S. battle lines. It was private organizations and a lot of local folks who managed that early development. Things can change positively, but it takes time. We did have an update to our enabling legislation that now specifically includes discussing the wider context of the war — including the central role of slavery. The Civil War happens largely because of conflict over the institution of slavery. For many, many years, a lot of our battlefield interpretation would only talk about the movements, soldiers, and tactics of specific battles, not necessarily why the fighting happened in the first place. That’s changed.

Planning Your Visit

Missy: This park has so much — battlefields, historic buildings, the cemetery, driving tours, ranger programs. If you’re new and you’re going, how do people know where to start?

Mary: Don’t get overwhelmed. Looking at a map of the park, you’ll see four main areas. Fredericksburg covers land related to the Battle of Fredericksburg, which happened in December 1862. Chancellorsville is 10 miles west of Fredericksburg and covers the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863 — just a few months after Fredericksburg. Then the Battle of the Wilderness, a little west of Chancellorsville. And then the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, a little south of the Wilderness. Those two are connected in time — that’s Grant’s Overland Campaign, spring of 1864, which ultimately stalls at Petersburg before Appomattox the following year.

Mary: We also have several historic sites. Chatham, which is part of Fredericksburg but has a wide history of its own as a former slave plantation with fascinating post-war history. The Stonewall Jackson Death Site — the farm office where Stonewall Jackson died, once part of a larger slave plantation. Salem Church, connected to both the Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville campaigns. And Elwood — another former slave plantation on the Wilderness battlefield.

Mary: I would start at one of our two visitor centers — Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville — both of which have orientation information, park films, exhibits, and most importantly, staff. Park rangers present who can provide guidance, maps, and answers. During the summer, a lot of our buildings are open. We have driving tours for each battlefield — usually about an hour and a half per tour, though much longer if you add a hike or want to go more in depth. You can do all four battles in one day. It’s not impossible, but it’s a lot to handle. I tell people don’t fill up your history cup so much that you can’t take it anymore. Give yourself grace to absorb what you’re experiencing. By the Fredericksburg Visitor Center, the Sunken Road trail is about a half mile and covers a decent amount of history — you walk along the road, part of the Confederate line, go up Marye’s Heights, and walk through the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. It’s a great concentrated experience. Chatham is stop number two on the Fredericksburg driving tour and gives you that view from the other side of the river.

Missy: The website has so much information for pre-visit planning. And I really appreciated that on a hot July day I could do the driving tour from the car to stay cool. It’s also so close to Interstate 95 — this is a great destination, but also an easy pit stop on a road trip. You can spend 30 minutes or 30 hours here.

Mary: Some logistical things — our park grounds are open sunrise to sunset every day, including Christmas and New Year’s. When the visitor centers are closed, the grounds are always open for hiking. Dogs are welcome in the park, with the exception of the grounds of the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. Service animals are allowed in park buildings. The Wilderness and Spotsylvania battlefields don’t have visitor centers — they have open-air exhibit shelters with signage, battle maps, and information. Lots of hiking trails are available there. The driving tours are available on the NPS app and website and serve as a great guide if you’re exploring those areas on your own.

The Luminaria

Missy: Tell me about the National Cemetery Luminaria.

Mary: The Luminaria is our largest annual event. It’s the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Local Boy Scouts set out a candle for each burial in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery — over 15,000 candles, because a lot of the graves are unknown and some have more than one person buried in them. It’s the one night of the year the cemetery is open after hours. We have interpretive staff scattered throughout the cemetery at stations sharing stories of soldiers buried nearby. They play taps every half hour during the event. Thousands of people show up. It is one of those events where we see the whole community. It’s really beautiful.

Speed Round

Earliest park memory?
When I was in kindergarten, I lived in Philadelphia and we took a field trip to the Liberty Bell.

What made you love the parks?
I loved natural spaces, and I love history. The fact that we do both of those things is very special to me.

Favorite thing about Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park?
Taking a walk on the battlefield towards sunset, when it’s nice and quiet, and just being able to absorb the history.

Park on your bucket list?
I haven’t been to a lot of the Northwest corridor of the country. Olympic, or some of the historical sites up there — I really haven’t explored that part of the country.

Three must-haves for a park visit?
Water and food, because those are critical. And my sketchbook — I like to draw and I always like to have it with me just in case.

Favorite campfire activity?
S’mores.

Tent, camper, or cabin?
Tent.

Hiking with or without trekking poles?
Usually without, but I should probably use them.

Favorite trail snack?
Little oranges.

Best animal sighting?
At Joshua Tree, I had been looking for a desert tortoise for the longest time. When I finally found one, I was just over the moon.

Favorite sound in the park?
Especially towards the evening, you get this influx of animal noises. I love hearing frogs. I don’t know why — I just think they’re fun.

Missy: Mary, thank you so much for joining us on The Parks Podcast. This has been a really wonderful conversation.

Mary: Thank you so much for having me.

Missy: That’s it for today’s episode. Until next time — we’ll see you in the parks.

Music for The Parks Podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. Follow us @TheParksPodcast or visit TheParksPodcast.com.