Eleven years after the battle of Rivers Bridge, a group of local young men formed the Rivers Bridge Confederate Memorial Association and reburied the Confederate dead here, about a mile from the battlefield. The association began meeting at the site every year to recall the battle and the fallen Southerners. The area soon became known as the Memorial Grounds, and the association's annual service for the Confederate dead, a tradition that continues to this day, eventually led to preservation of the battlefield where the soldiers fell.