Civil War Strasburg

Strasburg became strategically important in the Civil War because the Manassas Gap Railroad, which reached the town from Washington, D.C., in 1854, intersected there with the Valley Turnpike, linking the Shenandoah Valley with eastern markets. In the summer of 1861, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s forces captured large quantities of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad rolling stock near Harper’s Ferry, 40 miles north, and to get that equipment onto the Manassas Gap Railroad in Strasburg, horses and mules pulled it up the Valley Turnpike from Martinsburg. Fourteen locomotives and almost a hundred cars were brought to Strasburg and then used throughout the Confederacy. Signal Knob, at the northern end of Massanutten Mountain, served during the war as an observation and signaling station from which Confederates watched Union positions and directed the opening attack of the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864. Strasburg was also known for pottery making throughout the 1800s, using local clay to produce food-storage crocks and decorative pieces, and after the war five small potteries here gave the town the nickname Pot Town. The brick building later used as the Strasburg Museum was built as a steam pottery factory in 1891, was bought by the railroad in 1913 for a depot after the pottery business failed, and became the museum in 1970, where pottery is displayed today.

Strasburg, Virginia · United States