Dispatches From the Parks: Richmond National Battlefield Park
For the first half of my recent trip to Virginia, my father and I set up home base in the state’s capitol, Richmond. Richmond revealed itself to us as quite a wonderful city. It’s extremely walkable, with great restaurants and stunning views of the James River. The most interesting thing about Richmond is how a national park site weaves its way throughout the city and its suburbs in the form of Richmond National Battlefield Park. Richmond National Battlefield Park commemorates the area’s role in the American Civil War.
We began our first full day in Richmond by walking a couple of blocks down from our hotel to Tredegar Iron Works, which is right on the James River. Tredegar Iron Works was the main weapon supplier for the Confederate Army and now serves as a museum and visitor center for Civil War history. Unfortunately, the buildings were not open while we were down there as the National Park Service is still adjusting to the COVID era. However, the buildings make for a striking sight among the Richmond skyline, and they are in a great location being just a stone’s throw from the James River. So, we continued onto Browns Island, which is right across the street from Tredegar Iron Works and hosts a monument to Richmond’s role in the American Civil War. While the monument is cool, what really caught our eyes were the numerous ospreys that hang out by the bridge leading from Browns Island and crossing to the other side of the river.
After walking around Richmond for a bit longer, we grabbed our car and made our way over to Cold Harbor Visitor Center in the suburbs of Richmond. Currently this is the only visitor center that is open in the park. The visitor center is small with just a couple of exhibits and a ranger station, but it does cover a lot of history. Not only does it cover the Battle of Cold Harbor, which took place during the Overland Campaign towards the end of the war, but it also covers the nearby Battle of Gaines’ Mill, which took place during the Peninsula Campaign at the beginning of the war. On the windy but sunny day that we were there we decided to hike the Cold Harbor Battlefield Gold Trail. The trail follows the perimeter of the National Park Service land on the battlefield making it weave through forests and streams for about three and a half miles. This did reveal a few surprises. First of all, we saw quite a bit of wildlife including some eel-like creatures in one of the streams and a bald eagle flying in the sky. Second of all, towards the end of our hike we came across a monument in a clearing in the middle of the woods. Moving closer to the monument we noticed that it was dedicated to soldiers from Connecticut (Litchfield County to be specific), our home state. After reading through the monument we noticed that one of the men listed was Martin Blake, who is an ancestor of ours. So that made for a really cool, but unexpected moment. The most noticeable characteristic of the hiking trail and the battlefield as a whole is the amount of remnants of the trench warfare fighting style that are still visible centuries later. Almost everywhere you went on this battlefield you would see massive grooves in the ground that used to be trenches that the soldiers walked through or even dents from where artillery used to stand.
With an entire afternoon still to go we also decided to check out the nearby Gaines’ Mill district of the park. Gaines’ Mill is only a few roads down from Cold Harbor making it an easy diversion, but the last road is a narrow and windy one so be careful driving it. At the Gaines’ Mill district, we hiked the Gaines’ Mill Battlefield via Wilcox Trail Loop, which is an under two-mile trail that follows where a Confederate assault took place. The most interesting aspect of the trail is near the end where it leads you to an open field and a wayside exhibit that explains above the field is where one of the first uses of aerial espionage was used by both the Union and Confederacy. They sent soldiers or allies up in hot air balloons. Unfortunately, the field and sight of some intense fighting is private property, and that seems to be a recurring issue throughout this park as one of the main areas of action at Cold Harbor is also private property that cannot be accessed.
Richmond National Battlefield Park is an incredible park that does a great job of combining city and wilderness landscapes into one diverse experience. The city of Richmond is quite fantastic too so this is definitely a park you will want to visit.
