Battle of the Wilderness • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The Gordon Flank Attack Trail wayside marker is at Stop Two of the Wilderness Battlefield Auto Tour.
Text from the marker:
Gordon Flank Attack Trail
In this field and its surrounding woods fell nearly one-third of the men killed or wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness.
The two-mile Gordon Flank Attack Trail tracks the Battle of the Wilderness in all its horrible forms: the open-field Union attacks here that initiated the battle; the stalemate in the tangled woods to the north; and the devastating Confederate flank attack that, after two days of fighting, almost brought the Federals to disaster.
Caption to the map:
The trail is two miles long – about a 60-minute walk. A printed guide is available between the second and third stops on the trail.
Caption above the photo:
The Wilderness: “Hell Itself”
The mature forests here today bear little resemblance to the Wilderness of 1864. For years before the war, vast tracts of the Wilderness had been timbered. When the armies arrived, they found a sometimes impenetrable landscape of matted thickets and young trees. Wrote one of Grant’s officers, “It was a battle fought with the ear, and not the eye. All circumstances seemed to combine to make the scene one of unutterable horror.”
Nearly every sapling visible in this postwar view bears the scars of bullets or shells. Many of the dead lay unburied for years.
Location of the marker
The marker is on the northwest side of the parking area for the Wilderness Battlefield Exhibit Shelter. It is at the beginning of the Gordon Flank Attack Trail.
(go to the Stop 2 page)
(go to the Battlefield Auto Tour page)