The first field fortifications at Reams Station were built on July 1, 1864, by soldiers of the Union Sixth Corps while they tore up the railroad after the return of the ill-fated Wilson-Kautz cavalry raid. Hastily constructed, the works were L-shaped, with the short arm running north-south along the Petersburg & Weldon Railroad and the other face angled northwest. When Federal soldiers arrived on August 23rd, they found the trenches damaged by weather, with rain-eroded sides and water standing in the ditch inside the earthworks. In the center, Depot Road passed through a ten-yard-wide opening, and northeast of that gap the rail line ran through a deep cut behind the trench, with walls reaching thirteen feet in some places. The artillery placed west of the railroad had to be moved by hand because there was no room for horses or limbers, leaving the cannons and ammunition difficult to move if the position were overrun. Union soldiers added a new line facing south that joined the short end of the existing works, changing the L shape into a U. Union Major General Andrew Humphreys called the intrenchments slight, saying they ran along the railroad about twelve hundred yards, with returns about eight hundred or one thousand yards long at each end, nearly at right angles to the railroad, and that the direction of the returns exposed the troops in them to reverse artillery fire. The field works repelled the first two Confederate assaults, but the third attack found the opening where the road entered the northwest corner of the works and doomed the Federal soldiers defending their unsupported position.