Richmond NBP Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Richmond National Battlefield Park

Killion, Jeffrey

Richmond National Battlefield Park (NBP) comprises various discontiguous administrative units encompassing 15 sites and a total of approximately 2,879.42 acres in and around the City of Richmond and Town of Mechanicsville, Virginia, within Henrico, Hanover, and Chesterfield counties. The park is associated with Union attempts to take the Confederate capital city of Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862, the Overland and Bermuda Hundred Campaigns in 1864, and the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign in 1864-1865. Initially conceived as a state park in 1932 following a series of land purchases by the Richmond Battlefield Park Corporation beginning in 1927, Richmond NBP was established by an act of Congress on May 2, 1936 (Public Law 49 Stat. 1155) and accepted by the Department of the Interior on July 14, 1944. The majority of the historic resources within the park are associated with fierce engagements between the Union and the Confederacy that occurred on the fields and wooded areas around the City of Richmond. Most of the battlefields, particularly Cold Harbor, contain readily visible remnants of extensive systems of field fortifications that reflect the state of military tactics at the time of the Civil War and provide information about how the battles were fought. The park also contains portions of the lines of permanent fortifications that ringed Richmond and protected it from Union capture until the end of the war. Other significant contributing resources include the Watt, Garthright, and Shelton houses used as military headquarters and/or field hospitals during the Civil War, and a series of commemorative markers colloquially known as Freeman markers placed around Richmond ca.1925. The Richmond NBP Landscape is identified as the parent CLI landscape for Richmond National Battlefield Park. Within the parent landscape are ten component CLI landscapes: Beaver Dam Creek Battlefield, Chickahominy Bluff, Cold Harbor Battlefield, Drewry’s Bluff, Fort Harrison and vicinity, Gaines’ Mill Battlefield, Glendale Battlefield, Malvern Hill Battlefield, Parker’s Battery, and Totopotomoy Creek Battlefield at Rural Plains. In the future, additional research and land acquisitions may identify additional component landscapes.

Richmond NBP Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Richmond National Battlefield Park

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