Pamplin Park Is Restoring Breakthrough Battle Scene

Originally published March 2016 · p. 5

PETERSBURG, Va. – In January Pamplin Historical Park began a major scene restoration that will allow visitors to see much more of the Breakthrough Battlefield as the soldiers in 1865 would have seen it. By that time in the war the landscape around Petersburg was a desert. According to the park, the opposing armies had removed most of the trees around the farmsteads that dominated Dinwiddie County, using the wood for huts, campfires and fortifications. Over the intervening years much of those woodlots returned, obscuring the terrain that the soldiers knew during the 292-day Petersburg Campaign. The park’s selective clearing project is designed to open areas of the battlefield that were heavily wooded without undertaking the expense and ongoing maintenance burden of replicating the barren ground the soldiers experienced on April 2, 1865. Large trees will remain, with small trees and undergrowth removed. The result will be enhanced visibility along the park’s four-mile trail system. This is expected to greatly improve visitors’ ability to appreciate the subtle terrain features that influenced the course of the Union attack that broke Robert E. Lee’s line. Pamplin Historical Park clear-cut two areas of the battlefield in the late 1990s in order to provide a visual frame of reference between attackers and defenders. Several years later the park used selective clearing in limited areas to create an open woodland environment showing the battlefield terrain. The current scene restoration will build on those previous efforts to help battlefield visitors understand the battleground.

began Jan. 4 and was expected to be completed by the end of the month. The project was funded in large part by donations from Pamplin Historical Park members.