Preservation of Wilderness Battlefield is the main part of the mission of the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, and will be our most difficult task as long as our organization and the Wilderness Battlefield exist.

 

Within days after the end of the Battle of the Wilderness in May, 1864, the earthworks began to erode, and some were plowed over by farmers.  Historic road traces were abandoned and lost, and new roads sometimes obliterated features of the battlefield.  Structures which would be meaningful to us, but which were no longer useful to their owners, were torn down or left to rot.  Homes and businesses were constructed in places where American soldiers marched, camped, fought and died.

 

The Wilderness Battlefield joined the National Park System with the establishment of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park on February 14, 1927.

 

Through the years, FSNMP has been underfunded as has the entire National Park system. With a shortage of staff members, maintenance and improvements on the Wilderness Battlefield suffered. When FoWB was established in 1996, it took on the responsibility of providing assistance in taking on some of those duties. Under the direction of the NPS, our volunteers have made significant preservation contributions that are making battlefield visitor experiences more meaningful.

 

In addition to our primary undertaking of restoring Ellwood to its 1864 image, we have hundreds of volunteers who work on the battlefield in a myriad of events and projects throughout the year. For example, FoWB  locally sponsors the annual Civil War Preservation Trust Park Day.

 

Our volunteers paint monuments and cannons, maintain walking trails, build foot bridges and give lectures to local schools and civic organizations. We trim, mow and cut. We saw, hammer and nail. We repair structures and build new ones as the National Park Service directs.

 

We set up bus tours and walking tours of the battlefield and we have established an ongoing program of donating books on the Battle of the Wilderness to the Orange County Library, which is about a mile from the battlefield. We have brought in nationally known authors to speak on the battle. Included have been Gordon Rhea, Howard Coffin and Frank Walker Jr.

 

FoWB developed the General Grant’s Headquarters site (Stop Number 1 on the battlefield tour) and its access trail and interpretative panels. And we have had memorial services for the Confederate dead who were buried at Ellwood during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.

 

Our quarterly newsletter, Wilderness Dispatch, provides information about all the FoWB activities and the volunteers who make our work so successful.

 

Preservation, protection and promotion of the Wilderness Battlefield by FoWB members continues to be a major component in the battlefield’s continued growth as a key Civil War tourism destination. All of this is thanks to our loyal volunteers.