Battle of Fredericksburg • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Facts • Armies
The Meade Pyramid wayside marker is between Stops Five and Six of the Auto Tour (see map below)
The pyramid is made of rough hewn Virginia granite and is 30 feet square and 23 feet high. A trail leads from the marker back towards the pyramid but the Park Service does not classify it as accessible as a visitor would have to trespass across a dangerous set of railroad tracks to reach the pyramid itself.
Text from the marker:
The Meade Pyramid
Usually thought of as a Union monument, the large pyramid in front of you was in fact erected by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society. In 1897, the society contacted Virginia railroad executives asking them to erect markers at historically significant sites along their lines. The president of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad embraced the proposal, but rather than simply erected a sign, he constructed a stone pyramid modeled after the memorial to the unknown Confederate dead buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery.
The monument here marks the point where General George G. Meade’s Union division penetrated the boggy gap in “Stonewall” Jackson’s lines on December 13, 1862. Over the years it has become known as the Meade Pyramid. The monument in not accessible.
Location of the monument
The Meade Pyramid wayside marker is between Stops Five and Six of the Auto Tour, about 0.5 mile east of Stop Five and about 4.25 miles southeast of Lafayette Boulevard. (38°15’00.1″N 77°26’17.7″W)