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Battle of the Wilderness • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies

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There are a variety of monuments and markers on the Wilderness battlefield to help the visitor understand what happened here in May of 1864.

Monuments on the Wilderness Battlefield

There are only a handful of monuments on the Wilderness Battlefield. It was a battle that most survivors probably preferred to forget, fought in terrain where most men didn’t know their location, and just the first in a series of deadly battles that went on almost without pause all summer. The two states, two regiments, and three leaders remembered on these stones must serve as the representatives of many more who fought and sacrificed here in 1862.

• Battle of The Wilderness
• 12th New Jersey Infantry Regiment
• 140th New York Infantry Regiment
• Major General Alexander Hays
• Colonel James Nance
• Brevet Major General James Wadsworth
• Lee to the Rear!
• State of Texas
• Vermont Brigade

Historical Markers

There are several generations of historical markers on the Wilderness Battlefield. Two of the more unusual markers are the large cast bronze compasses found at Stops Three and Eight on the Auto Tour, each giving the distance and direction to important locations for the battle.

• Wilderness Compass (Orange Plank Road and Brock Road)
  
• Wilderness Compass (Saunders Field)

1950s Historical Markers

In the 1950s the National Park Service responded to the explosion of baby boom families taking to the roads of America by creating cast aluminum markers set in a wooden framework. They were sturdy and weather resistant – most are still in service sixty years later – and could be read from a nearby car. The castings could be very detailed and painted to create battlefield maps.

• Wilderness Campaign – May 5
• Wilderness Campaign – May 5 afternoon
• Wilderness Campaign – May 5-6
• Wilderness Campaign – May 6

Wayside markers and Orientation markers

The latest generation of markers use modern developments in printing technology and materials. Graphic, colorful and relatively inexpensive, the markers bring the pages of a history textbook onto the battlefield.

• A Military Scene
• A Wild, Wicked Roar
• An Uneasy Partnership
• Archeology at Elwood
• Battlefield Becomes Park
• Burying the Dead
• Capture of Winslow’s Battery
• Confederate Earthworks
• Chewning Farm
• Crisis in Tapp Field
• Crisis in the Wilderness
• Dark, Close Wood
• Echoes Homeward
• Ellwood
• First Blood in Saunders Field
• Flank Attack
• Gordon Flank Attack
• Grant Comes to Virginia
• Grant’s Headquarters
• Hell Itself
• Higgerson Farm
• Hill Escapes Capture
• Horror on the Orange Plank Road
• In the Nick of Time
• Key Terrain
• Lee-to-the-Rear
• Longstreet Felled
• No Turning Back
• On to Richmond
• Saunders Field
• Texans Attack
• The Climax
• The Confederate Line
• Union Headquarters
• Valuable Crossroads
• Widow Tapp’s Field
• Widow Tapp House

You can also go to any of the monuments or markers from the Auto Tour pages