Union Army Winter Camp Remains

This site preserves the remains of a Union 11th Corps winter camp in Stafford County, Virginia, where soldiers camped, drilled, and built roads and fortifications in and around the area. Unlike many of Stafford’s Civil War camps that were lost to farming or development, this regimental-size camp still shows visible hut sites, chimneys, trash holes, and defensive positions. The specific regiment that camped here is unknown, though local citizens once found many New York buttons, bullets, and some U.S. accoutrements in the camp. A letter written from camp near Stafford on March 1, 1863, by Sergeant Wilhelm Francksen of the 26th Wisconsin Infantry, a German immigrant who had come to the United States in late 1861, recalls a cold, difficult march of 13 miles in 2 days, the men’s arrival soaked and frozen, their first night under little cotton tents, and their labor cutting trees and building warm log huts with chimneys, fireplaces, bunks, and even decorated porches. After leaving Stafford, Francksen was badly wounded in the neck at Gettysburg, his legs were partially paralyzed, he was discharged from the Army in February 1864, and he died in the 1870’s. Soldiers’ winter quarters here took varied forms, including log huts with canvas or board roofs, huts dug into the ground, above-ground huts with finished interiors and fold-down bunks, and canvas tents, and this camp still contains features such as depressions from hut sites, rock piles from disturbed fireboxes or chimneys, and an intact sandstone hearth and large firebox.

Virginia · United States