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The ‘Digging the Mine’ wayside marker is next to the mine entrance at The Crater at Stop Eight on the Petersburg National Battlefield Eastern Front Auto Tour. The marker is equipped with a solar-powered audio presentation.
The marker is next to the entrance to the mine tunnel and to the “48th Pennsylvania – Entrance to Mines” monument
From the marker:
Digging the Mine
“We could blow that damn fort out of existence if we could run a mine shaft under it.”
– A private of the 48th Pennsylvania
June 23, 1864
Spurred by the offhand suggestion of a former coal miner, on June 25, 1864, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants put his 48th Pennsylvania to digging. Their objective: to tunnel under the Confederate line and blow up the battery at Elliott’s Salient.
Beginning on June 25, 1864, and continuing for the next month, these Pennsylvania coal miners burrowed a shaft 511 feet into this hillside. Then they packed four tons of powder into the magazines under the Confederate battery. At 3:15 a.m. on July 30, Pleasants lit the fuse and scrambled out of the tunnel.
From the caption to the background painting:
Men of the 48th Pennsylvania dug the mine. Remembered one onlooker, “I used to watch them popping out of the hole like so many brown gophers.”
From the caption to the inset portrait:
Lt. Col. Henry A. Pleasants, a former mining engineer – the architect of the Petersburg Mine.
From the caption to the inset map:
The picket lines opposite Elliott’s Salient were only 100 yards apart. Still, most military engineers thought it impossible to dig a mine that could reach from the Union to the Confederate works.
Learn more about the Battle of the Crater
The tunnel entrance was out of sight of the Confederate position below a rise in the ground
Closeup of the tunnel entrance showing the ventilation shaft
A walkway and viewing platform carries the walking trail over the mine entrance