The Slaughter Pen Farm

On December 13, 1862, Union forces nearly broke through Confederate lines here and came close to seizing victory, but the fighting at the Slaughter Pen Farm left more than 5,000 men in blue and gray fallen, and five Medals of Honor were awarded for valor on these fields. Despite that significance, the property was placed on the real estate market in December 2005, zoned and advertised for industrial development in Virginia at a price of $12 million, making its loss seem likely. The Civil War Preservation Trust, aided by the generosity of 65,000 members, purchased the ground in what was then the most expensive private-sector battlefield preservation effort in American history. The effort also relied on collaboration with the National Park Service, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, Tricord, Inc. and SunTrust Banks, Inc. At a news conference on October 16, 2006, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced a $2 million federal grant to protect the Slaughter Pen Farm and called the work here a model for conservation partnerships throughout the nation.

Virginia · United States