Confederate forces began constructing the earthen fort Battery Dantzler on May 18, 1864, after occupying the position following the Battle of Ware Bottom Church, where Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the James had been pushed back to prepared positions in Bermuda Hundred one mile east. The fort was built to stop the Union Navy from advancing up the James River toward Richmond. On April 2, 1865, Battery Dantzler was abandoned, and its occupants marched west to surrender with the rest of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox. The property is part of the Ware Bottom Church Battlefield; a park was established there in 1992 with a donation of 1.2 acres from Air Products Corporation, enlarged by an additional 14 acres in 2014 through the efforts of the Chesterfield Historical Society of Virginia and the Chesterfield County Department of Parks and Recreation, and preserved with help from a federal grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund administered by the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program and a donation from Walter and Rosie Goyne, whose family owned most of the surrounding land for over 100 years after the Civil War.