Petersburg • East • Southeast • West • Monuments • Markers • Facts • Timeline
Between the Petersburg National Battlefield Park’s Eastern Front and the forts along Flank Road leading to the Park’s Western Front there is a gap in the parks. In 1864 the land where Sycamore Street and Crater Road (then known as Jersusalem Plank Road) come together was dominated by Confederate Fort Mahone and Union Fort Sedgwick. They were so close to each other that life there was exceptionally deadly, and they became known as Fort Damnation and Fort Hell. The years after the war saw commercial development along the busy road, once the main highway south out of Petersburg. Not a trace of the two forts remains today. But three monuments still stand among the businesses to remind passersby of the city’s embattled past.
Visitors who leave the Park’s Eastern Front to drive to the Western Front tour stops will turn left (south) on Crater Road and drive past two of these monuments.
The monument to the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment (also known as the Gowen monument for the regiment’s colonel, whose statue is on top) is in the angle of the junction of Sycamore Street and Crater Road.
A small monument to the Old Men and Boys who held off the initial attack on Petersburg by Union Cavalry on June 9, 1864 is two hundred yards to the north on the west side of Crater Road.
The monument to Hartranft’s Pennsylvania Division of the Army of the Potomac and a wayside marker beside it which tells of Lincoln’s visit to Petersburg the day the Confederate lines broke is two blocks (about 350 yards) west of Crater Road.
From these monuments continue south about 0.7 mile on Crater Road. Be ready to turn right not long after crossing the train tracks. The turn at the light onto Flank Road is not well marked. Once on Flank Road you can stop at the pulloff and wayside marker to see the remains of Fort Davis.
Fort Hays is at another pulloff and wayside marker about 0.8 mile southwest on Flank Road.
From there continue west a little more than 2 miles, following Flank Road, which was the lines of the Union fieldworks, until you reach the beginning of the Park’s Western Front Auto Tour at Fort Wadsworth.