Gordon Flank Attack Trail
The Battle of the Wilderness
In this field and its surrounding woods fell nearly one-third of the men killed or wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness.
The two-mile Gordon Flank Attack Trail tracks the Battle of the Wilderness in all its horrible forms: the open-field Union attacks here that initiated the battle; the stalemate in the tangled woods to the north; and the devastating Confederate flank attack that, after two days of fighting, almost brought the Federals to disaster.
The Wilderness: "Hell Itself"
The mature forests here today bear little resemblance to the Wilderness of 1864. For years before the war, vast tracts of the Wilderness had been timbered. When the armies arrived, they found a sometimes impenetrable landscape of matted thickets and young trees. Wrote one of Grant's officers, "It was a battle fought with the ear, and not the eye. All circumstances seemed to combine to make the scene one of unutterable horror."
Marker is on Constitution Highway (State Highway 20), on the right when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
