Virtual Tour Stop, Chancellorsville Visitor Center

The Chancellorsville Visitor Center was built in 1963 as part of the Mission 66 Project to improve National Park Service sites by the time of the 50th birthday of the Service in 1966.

 

The visitor center is manned by historians and contains exhibits and a bookstore. A 22 minute film explains the battle.

 

Outside the visitor center a map painting depicts much of the battlefield. A trail begins here that loops around the building to interpretive signs and monuments to "Stonewall" Jackson ending in the spot where Jackson was wounded.

 

A trail loops around the building to the monument to "Stonewall" Jackson. The monument was placed here in 1888 by members of Jackson's staff. They placed it along the Orange Turnpike (today Route 3) where it could easily be seen, not on the Mountain Road where Jackson was wounded which could not have been seen by travelers on the Turnpike.

 

Prior to erecting the monument to "Stonewall" Jackson, J. Horace Lacy and Reverend Beverley Tucker Lacy placed a large boulder as the first effort to mark approximately where " Jackson Was wounded.

 

"Stonewall" Jackson along with eight others on the Mountain Road and a group of ten on the nearby Orange Turnpike had just completed a scouting mission and were returning to their lines when shots rang out. A total of ten of the nineteen men on the scouting mission were hit by bullets fired by the 18th North Carolina Regiment. Jackson was hit in the palm of the right hand, the lower part of the left arm and just below the left shoulder shattering a bone.

 

An exhibit explains what happened to "Stonewall" Jackson when he was mistakenly wounded by his own men on the evening of May 2, 1863 at the height of his greatest attack.

 

For many years the spot of Jackson's wounding was not exactly known, but in the mid 1990's a document surfaced written by Private David Kyle who lived nearby at the Bullock House (the next tour stop) and was Jackson's personal scout on the night of the wounding. In this detailed account of the wounding, Kyle gives distances from specific spots to the site of the wounding. Through triangulation the park's historians were able to figure out the spot described by David Kyle. That spot is in the middle of this photo on the Mountain Road.

 

In the visitor center parking lot area begins the Chancellorsville History Trail which has a 1/2 mile loop to Confederate trenches and a 3 1/2 mile loop through a portion of the May 3 battlefield.

 

Site of Wilderness Tavern

Continue to Tour Stop, Wilderness Tavern