Petersburg • East • Southeast • West • Monuments • Markers • Facts • Timeline
The nine and a half months of fighting around Petersburg is commemorated by only a handful of monuments scattered across the 576 square miles of contested land. About half of these monuments are in the Eastern Front unit of the battlefield, and a quarter are clustered around The Crater.
The monuments fall into three groups. Some honor units, most of whom saw heavy fighting and high casualties, as well as a regiment of Pennsylvania miners who carried out a unique battlefield exploit.
A second group commemorates places. They were scenes of violent conflict where men bled and died or just endured months of terrible hardship. They were important enough that the men who had experienced it carved the names into stone with a simple request for future generations – “Remember this place.”
The last group honors individuals – three Confederate generals and one of the founders of the National Park Service.
units
1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment
2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery Regiment
48th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment
48th Pennsylvania – Crater of Mine
48th Pennsylvania – Entrance to Mines
Hagood’s South Carolina Brigade
places
100th Anniversary Battle of the Crater
people