During the Civil War, the Manassas Gap and Orange and Alexandria railroads intersected at Manassas Junction, making it strategically important to both the Union and Confederacy as a supply depot and for military transportation, while two major battles were fought nearby and wartime diaries, letters, and newspapers recorded the war’s effects on civilians and the thousands of soldiers who passed through. The world’s first military railroad ran here, linking Manassas Junction and Centerville. In October 1861, after the First Battle of Manassas, the combined 40,000-man Confederate force of Gens. P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston established winter quarters at Centerville, closer to Washington. The army required more than 120,000 pounds of provisions for the men and 26 pounds of forage per animal each day. Supplies arrived by train at Manassas Junction, then were shifted to wagons and hauled to Centreville on the Manassas-Centreville Road, but despite attempts to corduroy the road by laying hewed logs side by side, heavy autumn rains turned it into a red-clay quagmire. Horse and mule teams consumed as much forage as they carried, and many animals became trapped so deeply in the mud that they could not be pulled out and were shot, causing badly needed supplies to pile up on the sidings. In November, Johnston and his quartermaster, Maj. Alfred Barbour, began building a railroad between Manassas Junction and Centreville. Soldiers first did the work, but Johnston concluded that such duties reduced troop strength needed for patrols, drills, and equipment maintenance. He directed Barbour to seek railroad workers in Richmond, and by mid-December Barbour had hired slaves to cut ties while waiting for rails that Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson had appropriated from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. To hasten construction, the builders placed ties at twice the standard interval directly on mounded earth without stabilizing gravel, and the small bridge over Bull Run rose only slightly above the water. The six-mile railroad was finished on February 17, 1862, but only six days later Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to withdraw from northern Virginia to defend Richmond.
