With nearly a million visitors a year, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is one of the most popular battlefields in the country. Here you can gain a fuller sense of one of the Confederacy’s greatest military victories by touring the battle lines, standing where the soldiers faced the pain and intensity of war, and imagining the cacophony produced by cannons, gunfire, and battle cries. This site, established in 1890 as the nation's first military park, was the scene of some of the Civil War's bloodiest battles. In Chickamauga alone, 34,624 were killed, missing, and wounded in September 1863. Though the Confederates won the battle at Chickamauga, the Union army retained control of Chattanooga. The normally thick cedar groves and foliage covering Chickamauga were trampled and, according to eyewitness accounts, trees were so shot up that a sweet cedar smell mingled with the blood of fallen soldiers.
Some areas around the park now suffer from suburban sprawl, but the 9,000-acre park itself is made up of serene fields and islands of trees. Monuments, battlements, and weapons adorn the roads that traverse the park, with markers explaining the action.
