Welcome to the Park of the Week Newsletter for November 9, 2023. In honor of Veterans Day on November 11, this week’s park memorializes the site of one of the largest and bloodiest battles ever fought on US soil.
Shiloh National Military Park
Location
Shiloh, Tennessee and Corinth, MS, United States
Claim to fame
In early April of 1862, the American Civil War had been raging for just under a year. When General Ulysses S. Grant’s Union troops encountered General Albert Sydney Johnston’s Confederate army near a church called Shiloh, the war would make a dramatic shift toward violence the likes of which North America had never known before.
The battle that broke out in this rural area along the Tennessee River was the first mass casualty loss for both sides. It set the tone for a brutal war that would claim an estimated 620,000 American lives.
Two days of slaughter at Shiloh Battlefield resulted in over 23,000 casualties, and the subsequent siege and battle at Corinth resulted in many more. The losses at Shiloh brought the war home to families across the United States and set the tone for the long, brutal war that lay ahead.
Reason to visit
Shiloh National Military Park oversees several sites, including Shiloh National Cemetery, where over 3,000 Union soldiers were interred, Shiloh Battlefield, and Corinth, the site of much intense fighting.
Visitors to both Shiloh and Corinth can explore visitor centers and watch park films detailing the events that forever changed the nation at those sites. At Shiloh there is a 12.7 mile auto tour that navigates visitors through the battlefield.
The sheer number of graves in the park, buried en masse in trenches or lined in rows in the cemetery, gives a haunting sense of the cost of war. Parks like these act as reminders of the fragile nature of life and of peace.
Wild Fact
Within Shiloh Battlefield is another national treasure–one of the largest and most intact prehistoric earthen mound villages in the eastern US. The village was built by the Mississipians around 800 years ago, covers 48 acres, and can be hiked via a short trail at a stop along the auto tour.
In Corinth, visitors can explore the site of the Corinth Contraband Camp, a community of African Americans fleeing slavery who took refuge with the Union army stationed there. During the war, the camp grew into a town of 6,000 former slaves, all beginning their journey toward freedom.
Want to learn more about Shiloh National Military Park? Visit the park’s website here.
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