In December 1862, Union Gen. Benjamin F. Kelley stationed detachments of the 54th Pennsylvania and 1st West Virginia Infantry regiments here to guard and repair the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a main supply route between the Ohio River and the national capital region. On March 6, 1863, Col. Edward James and his 106th New York Volunteer Infantry and a section of Capt. Thomas A. Maulsby’s Battery F, West Virginia Light Artillery (US), marched from Martinsburg and relieved the units. They first occupied a temporary camp across the tracks while preparing a more permanent site here. The New Yorkers moved here on April 2, and James named the site Camp Hopkins for his friend and schoolmate Lt. James W. Hopkins, who recently had died in Martinsburg. The camp consisted of conical Sibley tents arranged in company streets, with the companies positioned in line-of-battle order. The regiment guarded the railroad and patrolled the countryside to confiscate Confederate contraband. A cornfield and an apple orchard were located nearby, although the crops did no ripen soon enough to benefit the men, who broke camp on June 13, 1863. The 106th New York set off in pursuit of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as the invasion of Pennsylvania that ended at Gettysburg got under way. The campsite has survived remarkably intact since 1863, and holes where the tents stood are still visible.
