Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park preserves ground in Prince William County that saw major military activity throughout the Civil War and still retains traces of earlier occupants in road traces, buildings, and cemeteries. After the Confederate victory at Manassas, elements of the Southern army encamped here during the winter of 1861-'62, when hundreds of soldiers died from sickness and disease, and the cemetery of the 10th Alabama Regiment remains as evidence of that suffering. In 1862, Union and Confederate forces fought here in the Battle of Kettle Run on August 27, when Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's raid on Manassas Junction drew an attack by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's Federal troops against the Confederate rear guard under Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, a fiercely contested action that bought time for Jackson's men to escape and led into the larger battle of Second Manassas. Fighting returned in October 1863 during the Bristoe Campaign, when Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill launched a Confederate attack near Bristoe Station and Maj. Gen. Henry Heth's men advanced along both sides of Bristow Road toward the Orange & Alexandria Railroad embankment sheltering the Union II Corps; the result was a quick, bloody, one-sided battle in which Hill lost about 1,400 men, ending Robert E. Lee's last strategic offensive of the American Civil War. In 2000 Centex Homes bought the land, in 2002 developed New Bristow Village and gave the battlefield parcel to the Civil War Preservation Trust, and in 2007 Prince William County acquired the 140-acre site, preserving it as a historic open space with walking and equestrian trails.
