The Road to New Market: Clearing Ground for a Battlefield Greenway

Recipient: Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation · Grant: $28,277, a 2022 Battlefield Restoration Grant from the NPS American Battlefield Protection Program

The battle

In spring 1864, as the Civil War entered its fourth year, Union commander Ulysses S. Grant was pressing the Federal strategy of grinding the Confederacy into surrender. While he took on Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the east, he sent Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel up the Shenandoah Valley toward Staunton to seize its industry and farms. The Confederates did not wait: by May 14, Gen. John Breckinridge had gathered his main force at the town of New Market, and the armies clashed at midday on May 15.

Union infantry and cavalry under Augustus Moor, a German-born veteran of the Mexican War, fell back from Manor Hill until massed artillery forced Confederate units to retreat. Breckinridge sent in Virginia Military Institute cadets, some as young as 15, to fill the gap. By sunset the Union army was retreating, having surrendered five artillery pieces, one of them to the cadets. The Confederate victory did not last: by early June the Union had taken Staunton and pressed on toward ending the war.

At the time of the battle, Breckenridge Lane, the old River Road, ran to the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.

The project

The foundation will use the grant to move forward the New Market Greenway Trail, an interpreted path linking New Market's downtown with nearly 400 acres of protected battlefield. It builds on the foundation's preservation of the 13-acre River Road tract, with its state partners, Virginia's Department of Conservation and Recreation and Department of Historic Resources, and a 2018 Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant. The foundation will remove two non-historic buildings so the land can join the greenway and, in time, a wider network of trails built with VMI and the Town of New Market, turning landscapes of conflict into paths for wellness and renewal.

About the grants

Battlefield Restoration Grants help restore "day-of-battle" conditions at nationally significant battlefields and related sites of the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. They are funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which reinvests revenue from offshore oil and gas leasing in conservation and recreation. The program also offers Battlefield Land Acquisition, Preservation Planning and Battlefield Interpretation grants, supporting community-led stewardship in Tribal, state and local communities.

Sources

• National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program, "The Road to New Market – Clearing Ground for a Greenway Trail," 2022 Battlefield Restoration Grant Highlights. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-road-to-new-market.htm
• Series: previous, Third Winchester: Restoring Order in the Landscape of Memory.
• Corrected: "Breckenridge" to "Breckinridge" for the Confederate general (the lane keeps its own spelling).
• A photograph from the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation is not reproduced here.