General Bragg's Headquarters Site: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Stones River National Battlefield, National Park Service

National Park Service

General Bragg’s Headquarters Site is a discontiguous tract of the Stones River National Battlefield located along Old Nashville Pike, southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. The landscape is important for its particular associations to Civil War events and the period of commemorative landscape design that followed. Access to the headquarters site is provided by a paved county road that branches from the Old Nashville Pike at its intersection with the railroad. The site is approached from an adjacent parking lot shared with the Stones River Greenway. The period of significance for the Bragg's Headquarters Site landscape includes 1862-1933. This encompasses the 1862-63 Civil War Battle of Stones River, when this particular site was featured on the battle-era landscape as the headquarters of Confederate General Braxton Bragg. The site is also significant as a commemorative landscape designed under War Department administration (1928-1933), representing early battlefield preservation efforts by the federal government. Aside from the inscriptions, the marker is identical to the Rosecrans’s Headquarter marker located approximately one and one quarter mile to the northwest. Little information remains about the design of Bragg’s Headquarters, and the earliest available map of the site (1934) shows a minimalist commemorative design plan that bore no resemblance to the site’s appearance during the battle. The central feature of the Bragg’s Headquarters landscape is the historic monument, associated with both the battle events on the landscape and its subsequent commemorative design. Erected by the War Department in 1931, the structure is a pyramidal stack of cast concrete cannon shot atop a six-foot square granite base. A concrete walk that encircles the monument leads to the Old Nashville Pike, indicating the importance of the road during the battle and the 1930s site design. The rest of the site contains a manicured grass lawn edged by rows of trees along the bordering fencerow, common design features of Civil War commemoration during that era. The area surrounding the headquarters was once part of the Stones River Battlefield, contributing to site’s importance with regard to Civil War era events. Bragg’s Headquarters is surrounded by open fields with views of the railroad and roadway, preserving a perspective similar to what Bragg might have observed during the battle. The landscape retains integrity of location and association with its Civil War context, and the monument retains all aspects of integrity (location, association, materials, workmanship, setting, and design). The National Park Service (NPS) has managed the site, now a part of the Stones River National Battlefield, since 1933. Most of the site’s appearance (the pyramidal marker, circulation route, and spatial organization) is consistent with the 1930s War Department commemorative period, although the vegetation species and walkway materials have been altered.

General Bragg's Headquarters Site: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Stones River National Battlefield, National Park Service

Series