Last updated: June 30, 2025
Place
Information Panel: A Field of Many Battles
NPS / Autumn Cook
Quick Facts
Amenities
1 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits
Many people have crossed this land before you.
Can you hear them when you look over these fields?
Laughter as children run between houses in the neighborhood called Reno. Shouts from soldiers as they rush to their positions on the Fort. The first kick of drums echoing by enslaved people working on plantations named Mount Airy and Oak Lawn.
Take a moment to reflect on how our voices mingle with theirs.
Many people have valued the hill under you. The Piscataway are the oldest known people to make use of it. European colonists claimed it, then the Union Army, African Americans, and finally the District and the Federal governments.
The image below was taken from the brick water tower nearby. It shows the largely Black Reno neighborhood in the early 1930s, before it was cleared for the exclusive suburbs that appear beyond the fields where Jackson-Reed High School now stands.
There is a lot of detail in this image.
Do you see the person in the fields?
Can you find laundry hung up behind someone's house?
Can you see the National Cathedral under construction?
Can you hear them when you look over these fields?
Laughter as children run between houses in the neighborhood called Reno. Shouts from soldiers as they rush to their positions on the Fort. The first kick of drums echoing by enslaved people working on plantations named Mount Airy and Oak Lawn.
Take a moment to reflect on how our voices mingle with theirs.
Many people have valued the hill under you. The Piscataway are the oldest known people to make use of it. European colonists claimed it, then the Union Army, African Americans, and finally the District and the Federal governments.
The image below was taken from the brick water tower nearby. It shows the largely Black Reno neighborhood in the early 1930s, before it was cleared for the exclusive suburbs that appear beyond the fields where Jackson-Reed High School now stands.
There is a lot of detail in this image.
Do you see the person in the fields?
Can you find laundry hung up behind someone's house?
Can you see the National Cathedral under construction?