On June 26, 1962, the heaviest fighting of the battle of Beaver Dam Creek raged on this ground. Fourteen Union cannon on the ridge beyond the creek blasted Dorsey Pender’s and Roswell Ripley’s Confederates as they charged across the fields, while Federal infantry, Pennsylvanians shielded by earthworks and a mill race, ravaged the gray lines with bullets as they waded into the waist-deep stream. A Southern officer wrote that “to take the works” was impossible. Confederate attacks along a two-mile front failed to dislodge the Federals from behind Beaver Dam Creek, and one Confederate said the bottomland turned into a “valley of death.” McClellan rightly claimed Union victory, but still he ordered Fitz John Porter’s troops to withdraw. The next morning the Federals dug in around Gaines Mill, five miles to the east, and Lee’s Confederates followed, bringing on the bloodiest battle of the campaign. Casualties were 1,484 Confederate and 361 Union.
