Aquia Landing

Aquia Landing was the Potomac River terminus of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, which ran from Richmond through Fredericksburg to this point, where passengers continuing north boarded steamships for Washington, D.C., fifty-five miles away. Because of its location on the Potomac and its nearness to Fredericksburg, it played an important role in the Civil War as the site of one of the war’s earliest military engagements and as a major supply base for the Army of the Potomac in three separate campaigns. From November 1862 through June 1863, supplies unloaded there were sent by rail to Brooke Station, Falmouth Station, and other points closer to the front. Locomotives carried men and supplies from Aquia Landing to the front and brought wounded soldiers to the rear. Confederates tore up the tracks in 1863, and the Union army shifted its supply base to Belle Plains the following year. The locomotive Genl. Haupt was named in honor of Herman Haupt, who supervised construction and transportation of the Union’s military railroads.

Virginia · United States