Vicksburg National Military Park lies along the Mississippi River in and around the city of Vicksburg, in Warren County, Mississippi, and Madison Parish, Louisiana. Established on February 21, 1899, and covering about 1,802 acres (729 hectares), it commemorates the Civil War campaign, siege and defense of Vicksburg — a decisive Union victory that secured Union control of the Mississippi River.
The siege
As a valuable commercial port and railroad hub, Vicksburg was a strategic position of enormous importance to the Confederacy. In the spring of 1863, Union forces under Major General Ulysses S. Grant began a 47-day siege against Confederate defenders under Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton. The siege cut the city off from supplies and communication with the rest of the Confederacy, steadily pressing Pemberton's forces toward surrender.
Today the park's landscape holds reconstructed forts, trenches, earthworks and gun batteries; the Civil War ironclad gunboat USS Cairo; Vicksburg National Cemetery; and one of the most extensive collections of commemorative monuments, sculpture and outdoor art on Earth.
Image from the National Park Service's page.
A landscape made for defense
The park sits near the boundary between the Mississippi Alluvial region and the Gulf Coastal Plain, within the Coastal Plain physiographic province. Its terrain — steep river bluffs, deep ravines and flat-topped ridges — shaped the military history of the place and offered strong defensive positions.
The rock layers
From oldest to youngest:
| Unit | Age | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Vicksburg Group — Forest Hill Formation, Mint Spring Formation, Mariana Limestone, Glendon Limestone, Byram Formation, Bucatunna Formation | early Oligocene | the park's oldest bedrock: sedimentary layers from the Oligocene Epoch, about 34 to 23 million years ago |
| Catahoula Formation | late Oligocene | locally indurated sandstones and clays, lying unconformably on the Vicksburg Group |
| Pre-loess terrace deposits | Pleistocene | mostly sand and gravel |
| Loess | Pleistocene | a thick blanket of fine, wind-blown silt derived from glacial outwash, forming the steep bluffs above the Mississippi |
| Alluvium and abandoned channel fill | youngest | loose gravel, sand, silt and clay along the park's deeply cut ravines and creeks |
The Illinois State Memorial. Image from the National Park Service's page.
Part of a larger region
Vicksburg belongs to the Coastal Plain province, in its Mississippi Alluvial Plain section, and shares its geologic history and some characteristic formations with a region well beyond the park. The NPS Geologic Resources Inventory has produced digital geologic maps and reports for the park, and a soil resources inventory has been completed; both are available through the NPS DataStore.
Sources
- National Park Service: "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi and Louisiana," citing National Park Service (2014, 2016).
In these publicationsVicksburg National Military Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
1
0
0
0
Comments
