Culpeper Battlefields State Parks: Behind the Scenes with Bud Hall and Mike Block
On June 8, 2024, Virginia opened its new Culpeper Battlefields State Park, encompassing more than 2,200 acres on battlefields at Cedar Mountain, Brandy Station, Kelly’s Ford, and Rappahannock Station. Both battlefields had been preserved thanks to long-running efforts by a variety of partners, including the American Battlefield Trust.
ECW’s Darren Rawlings took a deep-dive behind the scenes at both battlefields by talking with a pair of historians who’ve played long-time roles in the preservation of each. We made the interviews available as exclusive podcasts for our Patreon members, and now we’re making them available to our wider audience via the ECW YouTube page.
Brandy Station is best-known as the site of the largest cavalry battle of the war in June 1863, an important prelude to the Gettysburg campaign. However, Brandy Station saw fighting on a number of occasions, making it a particularly storied piece of ground. Historian Bud Hall has been instrumental in the preservation of the battlefield at Brandy Station.
At Cedar Mountain, in August 1862, Confederates under Gen. Stonewall Jackson fought for the first time with elements of the new Army of Virginia under Gen. John Pope. Historian Mike Block—an ECW contributor—has long been involved in the effort to preserve the Cedar Creek battlefield.
Click here for more information on Culpeper Battlefields State Park.
My father brought me to all these fields beginning when I was 5 – plus Gettysburg, Sharpsburg, the Valley, Appomattox, Yorktown, Williamsburg, etc. of course – and I’ve never gotten over it. Don’t want to. Oh, we brought the rest of the family too…