Crossing of Commerce & Conflict

A color postcard from 1909 shows a steel truss bridge over Cedar Creek.

C.L. Kneisley, Druggist, Strasburg Va., “Cedar Creek Bridge, Cedar Creek Battlefields, near Strasburg, Va.,” Shenandoah County Library Archives

The Valley Turnpike was the main road through the Shenandoah Valley in the 1800s.
It turned the Shenandoah Valley into a prosperous farming area. The turnpike connected farms and mills with big city markets.

A bridge over Cedar Creek connected Middletown and Strasburg in 1839. It was a covered wooden bridge, spanning about 120 feet between stone abutments. Both Civil War armies fought for control of this crossing. Many times, soldiers burned and rebuilt the bridge.

Only the two bridge abutments remain at this crossing. A small section of the original turnpike is nearby.

“Slave Trader, Sold to Tennessee” from Sketchbook of Landscapes in the State of Virginia by Lewis Miller, Virginia, ca. 1853

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; gift of Dr. and Mrs. Richard M. Kain in memory of George Hay Kain

Domestic Traffic in Enslavement

The Valley Turnpike was a route to sell enslaved persons farther south. In 1834, traders marched several hundred people from Alexandria to Louisiana. They travelled through the Shenandoah Valley, crossing Cedar Creek. A Valley resident complained the road was “thronged with droves of these wretches & the human carcass-butchers, who drive them on the hoof to market.” Lewis Miller’s 1853 drawing shows a similar scene.

Tags: cedar creek & belle grove national historical park, historic turnpike crossing, slavery, civil war, transportation