Sailor's Creek and High Bridge: Two Virginia State Parks on Lee's Last Retreat

In central Virginia's Piedmont, the Appomattox River valley holds two state parks bound together by the fighting of the last days before Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Sailor's Creek Battlefield State Park marks the last major battle between Union and Confederate forces, on April 6, 1865. Six miles west, the crossing of the Appomattox at High Bridge saw fighting before and after Sailor's Creek, as each side tried to pin the other on one bank of the river.

The retreat

On April 2, 1865, Union troops broke through the fortifications protecting Petersburg and its supply lines to the south. Lee moved his army west toward Danville, Virginia, planning to turn south and join Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's troops in North Carolina.

Creeks and the Appomattox River, swollen with spring rain, made the march slow and hard. Supplies meant to meet Lee's army at Amelia Court House, 45 miles west of Petersburg, had been sent elsewhere, and the slim lead the Confederates had was lost to a day spent scouring the countryside for food. With Union troops pressing from the south and from behind, Lee's army was forced into a series of daytime battles and night marches.

Sailor's Creek

The fighting came to a head along Big Sailor's and Little Sailor's Creeks, which join to form Sailor's Creek before it flows into the Appomattox. On April 6, 1865, hungry, exhausted and heavily outnumbered Confederates held off Union regiments in three separate engagements — but lost 8,000 soldiers, or 25 percent of their force, killed, captured or surrendered, including eight generals. Accounts of the battle say that Lee, seeing the confusion afterwards, exclaimed, "My God, has the army been dissolved?"

Today the park's gentle landscape slopes down to Little Sailor's Creek, where Union soldiers waded chest-deep toward the Confederate lines, holding their weapons over their heads. A short trail across an open field and through woods gives visitors vantage points to follow the sequence of events. On the hill above the creek stands Hillsman House, the farmhouse that served as a hospital for both sides; surgical instruments and other artifacts are displayed inside, and its floors are still visibly stained with blood. The dead left behind when the Confederates fled west lay piled for days until the few residents of the farming district could bury them in mass graves.

The park has a small, modern visitor centre and programs from battlefield tours to night-sky astronomy — the skies are still very dark in rural "Southside" Virginia, the region east of the Blue Ridge and south of the James River. Staff describe the surrounding countryside as little changed in 150 years, and work is under way to replant trees where they stood during the battle. Experts call the battlefield relatively "pristine."

High Bridge

On the same day as Sailor's Creek, a small but determined Confederate force at High Bridge beat back Union troops trying to seize the crossing. After the disaster at Sailor's Creek, Lee ordered his army across the river at High Bridge, still in Confederate hands, and told them to burn it and a lower wagon bridge beside it. He hoped to put the river between his army and Grant's and reach Farmville, where rations were to arrive by rail from the west. But Union troops arrived in time to put out the fire on the wagon bridge and pushed on toward Farmville, forcing Lee's men to abandon their first real meal in days and keep moving west. After Union forces took Appomattox Station, the last depot that could have supplied the Confederates, Grant and Lee began the exchange of letters that led to Lee's surrender on April 9.

The 2,400-foot wooden High Bridge, built in 1850 and one of the longest of its day, carried the South Side Rail Line over the Appomattox. It was repaired in the months after the war, and a 150-foot-high steel railroad bridge was built beside it in 1915. In 2006 the Norfolk Southern Railroad, no longer using the line, gave the railbed to the state, and in 2012 High Bridge Trail State Park opened.

The trail today

The park is a 31-mile linear trail on the old railbed: 12 feet wide, surfaced in coarse gravel, and good for walking, cycling, horseback riding and, in winter, cross-country skiing. It climbs gently from Burkeville through Farmville, home of Longwood University, to Pamplin City, passing small towns, open fields and woods. Two spur trails about 1.5 miles east of Farmville give mountain bikers almost 3 miles of twists, turns and climbs.

The bridge is the centrepiece — broad, wooden, and with railings high enough to feel safe on foot or on a bicycle — with views of the river and its wide floodplain in every season. But those who come only for the bridge miss much of the trail. The stretch between Rice and Burkeville is a favourite, where the railbed cuts across large stream valleys and along hillsides that tested the engineering of its day; quail, wild turkey, coyote and ravens are among the wildlife seen along the way. There are many entry points, many with parking, including some suited to horse trailers, and the small towns along the route are finding new business in the trail. One park program even lets visitors see the route by van.

Sources

Based on "Traversing History at Sailor's Creek and High Bridge State Parks," an abridged article published by the National Park Service; it quotes Virginia state park staff, including Sailor's Creek chief ranger Lee Wilcox and park manager and author Chris Calkins.

• The article calls Lee's army the "Army of Virginia" and spells Johnston "Johnson"; this page corrects both.
• The article's photographs, credited to the Virginia Tourism Corporation, are not reproduced.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.