Marye’s Heights

In May 1864, a Northern photographer took a picture of Marye’s Heights from in front of Federal Hill, a large white house approximately 250 yards to the left-rear. Seventeen months earlier, thousands of Union soldiers saw this panoramic view as they hurried past Federal Hill to attack Marye’s Heights. Although streets and houses now cover the plain where thousands of soldiers died, important remnants of the Civil War landscape remain. Hanover Street still follows the same course it did in 1862. The canal ditch that once bisected the street has been covered and paved to form modern Kenmore Avenue, but the abrupt bluff beside the canal, which sheltered Union soldiers as they formed for their attack, is still visible in the back yard of the house directly across the intersection. Several nineteenth-century buildings also remain.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States