National Military Park, National Battlefield, National Battlefield Park, and National Battlefield Site are four designations for 25 battle sites preserved by the United Statesfederal government because of their national importance. The designation applies to "sites where historic battles were fought on American soil during the armed conflicts that shaped the growth and development of the United States...."[1]
There are eleven National Battlefields (NB), nine National Military Parks (NMP), four National Battlefield Parks (NBP), and one National Battlefield Site (NBS). The National Park Service does not distinguish among the four designations in terms of their preservation or management policies.
Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on an artificial island near Charleston, South Carolina, to defend the region from a naval invasion. It was built after British forces captured and occupied Washington during the War of 1812 via a naval attack. The fort was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle of Fort Sumter occurred from April 12 to 13, sparking the American Civil War. It was severely damaged during the battle and left in ruins. Although there were some efforts at reconstruction after the war, the fort as conceived was never completed. Since the middle of the 20th century, Fort Sumter has been open to the public as part of the Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, operated by the National Park Service.
The Battle of Oriskany was a major engagement of the Saratoga campaign during the American Revolutionary War. On August 6, 1777, an American column of Tryon County militia and Oneidas marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix was ambushed by a contingent of Britain's Indigenous allies and Loyalists. It was one of the few battles of the war in which most non-Indigenous participants were settlers born in the Thirteen Colonies. The Americans suffered heavy casualties during the battle.
Fort Stanwix was a colonial fort whose construction commenced on August 26, 1758, under the direction of British General John Stanwix, at the location of present-day Rome, New York, but was not completed until about 1762. The bastion fort was built to guard a portage known as the Oneida Carry during the French and Indian War. Fort Stanwix National Monument, a reconstructed structure built by the National Park Service, now occupies the site.
The Battle of the Washita River occurred on November 27, 1868, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River.
The Battle of South Mountain, known in several early Southern accounts as the Battle of Boonsboro Gap, was fought on September 14, 1862, as part of the Maryland campaign of the American Civil War. Three pitched battles were fought for possession of three South Mountain passes: Crampton's, Turner's, and Fox's Gaps.
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument preserves the site of the June 25 and 26, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn, near Crow Agency, Montana, in the United States. It also serves as a memorial to those who fought in the battle: George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry and a combined Lakota-Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho force. Custer National Cemetery, on the battlefield, is part of the national monument. The site of the connected military action led by Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen is also part of the National Monument, but is about 3 miles (4.83 km) southeast of the main site.
The American Battlefield Trust is a charitable organization whose primary focus is in the preservation of battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War, through the acquisition of battlefield land. The American Battlefield Trust was formerly known as the Civil War Trust. On May 8, 2018, the organization announced the creation of the American Battlefield Trust as the umbrella organization for two divisions, the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War Trust, which was formerly known as "Campaign 1776".
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, originally Harpers Ferry National Monument, is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in and around Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The park includes the historic center of Harpers Ferry, notable as a key 19th-century industrial area and as the scene of John Brown's failed abolitionist uprising. It contains the most visited historic site in the state of West Virginia, John Brown's Fort.
Dade Battlefield Historic State Park is a state park located on County Road 603 between Interstate 75 and U.S. Route 301 in Sumter County, Florida. The 80-acre (32 ha) park includes 40 acres (160,000 m2) of pine flatwoods and a live oak hammock. Also called the Dade Massacre site, it preserves the Second Seminole War battlefield where tribal Seminole warriors and Black Seminole allies fought soldiers under the command of Major Francis L. Dade on December 28, 1835. Each year, on the weekend after Christmas, the Dade Battlefield Society sponsors a reenactment of the battle that started the Second Seminole War.
Pennsylvania was the site of many key events associated with the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War. The city of Philadelphia, then capital of the Thirteen Colonies and the largest city in the colonies, was a gathering place for the Founding Fathers who discussed, debated, developed, and ultimately implemented many of the acts, including signing the Declaration of Independence, that inspired and launched the revolution and the quest for independence from the British Empire.
Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park became the 388th unit of the United States National Park Service when it was authorized on December 19, 2002. The National Historical Park was created to protect several historically significant locations in the Shenandoah Valley of Northern Virginia, notably the site of the American Civil War Battle of Cedar Creek and the Belle Grove Plantation.
Douglas D. Scott is an American archaeologist most notable for his work at the Little Bighorn in the mid-1980s. Working with Richard Fox, Melissa Connor, Dick Harmon, and staff and volunteers from the National Park Service, Scott worked to sketch out a field methodology that has enabled archaeologists to systematically investigate battlefields. This work is internationally recognized as constituting a great step forward in our ability to interpret battlefields archaeologically, regardless of the extent of the historical record. At the Little Bighorn, the fieldwork produced an interpretation of the battle that for the first time gave a clear understanding of the way the battle developed and pointed out some of the glaring inaccuracies of the historiography of the event. The fieldwork also helped determine which of the 242 headstones to the 210 U.S. soldiers lost at the Little Bighorn were erroneous, and recovered skeletal elements allowed one of the soldiers to be positively identified. It was not as successful in recovering the remains of 24 men lost in Deep Ravine and whose whereabouts are unknown to this day.
The siege of Fort Stanwix began on August 2, 1777, and ended on August 22, 1777. Fort Stanwix, at the western end of the Mohawk River Valley, was a primary defense point for the Continental Army against the British and indigenous forces aligned against them during the American Revolutionary War. The fort was occupied by Continental Army forces from New York and Massachusetts under the command of Colonel Peter Gansevoort. The besieging force was composed of British regulars, Loyalist soldiers, Hessians, and indigenous warriors, under the command of Brigadier General Barry St. Leger. St. Leger's expedition was a diversion in support of Lieutenant General John Burgoyne's campaign to take control of the Hudson River Valley to the east.
The Civil War Trust's Civil War Discovery Trail is a heritage tourism program that links more than 600 U.S. Civil War sites in more than 30 states. The program is one of the White House Millennium Council's sixteen flagship National Millennium Trails. Sites on the trail include battlefields, museums, historic sites, forts and cemeteries.
Myles Moylan was a United States Army officer with an extensive military career, which included the battle of Gettysburg, and the battle of the Little Bighorn. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallantry in leadership at the Battle of Bear Paw. He also participated in the Washita Massacre and Wounded Knee Massacre.
The Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument was the location of the Battle of Mill Springs in January 1862. It was declared to be a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1993 and authorized as a national monument in 2019. After acquisition of property by the National Park Service it was established as a unit on September 22, 2020.
The practice of preserving the battlefields of the American Civil War for historical and memorial reasons has been developed over more than 150 years in the United States. Even during the American Civil War active duty soldiers on both sides of the conflict began erecting impromptu battlefield monuments to their recently fallen comrades. Since these initial attempts at preservation and commemoration, important Civil War battle sites have been preserved by various groups and many are now in the care of the National Park Service and overseen by the American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP). Of approximately 10,500 acts of aggression that occurred between the United States and the Confederacy 384 have been identified in a 1993 federal report as being principal to the conflict. From these, a select few have been chosen based on their historical significance, accessibility, and preservability to be federally curated. Beyond sites run by the U.S. Federal government, many secondary battle sites across the United States are maintained and operated by state governments and private historical groups.
Barbara Ann Sutteer (Booher) is an American retired National Park Service (NPS) employee. Sutteer worked for the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska for 17 years before being appointed the superintendent of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the first female and first Native American to serve in that position. Sutteer's work at Little Bighorn contributed to a more balanced presentation of the events that took place there, as well as increasing Indian representation in park employees, museum exhibits, and the stories told by park interpreters.
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