Shenandoah Battlefields Foundation Preserves
189 Acres At Cedar Creek
(September 2008 Civil War News)

MIDDLETOWN, Va. — The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation (SVBF) recently preserved more than 189 acres of Cedar Creek battleground where Gen. Jubal Early’s Confederates assaulted Federal troops the morning of Oct. 19, 1864.

The newly protected VIII Corps Property lies in Warren County at the heart of the new Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park and links previously protected areas within the park boundary. More than 47,000 troops engaged at Cedar Creek in what would become the last major Civil War battle in the Shenandoah Valley.

As the site of the encampments and line of battle for the Union VIII Corps, the newly protected property saw some of the most dramatic fighting of the battle. By the end of that morning, much of the VIII Corps either ceased to exist or was in complete disarray, having withdrawn miles northward. 

Belle Grove Plantation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation own and manage 696 acres along US 11. To the southeast, the SVBF has protected more than 303 acres. The VIII Corps Property begins to link the northern and southern ends of the park.

Park superintendent Diann Jacox said, “This area not only contains a significant part of the park’s natural and cultural story, but as we consider how visitors will one day explore the park, preservation of this parcel will enable visitors to move between the various other areas of the park.”

The Battlefields Foundation purchased the property from the estate of Goldie Cooley Hudson, a descendant of the Cooley family which owned and lived at Belle Grove Plantation during the Civil War. It was her wish that the open space be preserved.

The VIII Corps tract, which may have been a part of the plantation during the war, had been owned by Mrs. Hudson and her late husband, John, since the 1950s and served as their retirement retreat.

According to the foundation, the property contains 652 feet of frontage along Cedar Creek, a major tributary of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. Preservation of this land protects the stream’s forested buffer and a cultivated bottomland field composed of prime agricultural soils.

Portions of the property will remain in agricultural use while the Battlefields Foundation conducts archeological and cultural resources studies. The research will help determine appropriate types and locations of future interpretive activities.

The purchase was made possible through the SVBF’s annual federal appropriation for land preservation in the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District, matched with $539,000 from the Commonwealth of Virginia through a grant from the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation. The SVBF placed a conservation easement on the property which is co-held with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

The core area at the Cedar Creek battlefield covers 10 square miles, totaling more than 6,200 acres, only 1,092 of which have been protected.