Vicksburg National Military Park

 It's freezing cold here today and we did have a little sleet.  Not bad at all compared to the rest of our country that is having the biggest blizzard ever!  We decided to stay where we are for two more days while the bad weather goes around us.

We went to see the Vicksburg National Military Park today.   This 1,800-acre park is America's most monumented national military park, where the fate of our nation was decided in 1863 during the Civil War.  President Abraham Lincoln called Vicksburg "the key" and believed that "the war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket."  Maj. General Ulysses S. Grant was ordered to clear the Mississippi of confederate resistance.  This was one of the most bloody battles in the Civil War.  The battlefield includes 1,330 monuments and markers along a 16 mile tour road, a restored Union gunboat, and a National Cemetery.



The tour road goes around and thru the actual battlefield.

1,330 monuments and markers along a 16 mile tour road.

This was at a small Confederate fort on a big hill overlooking the Mississippi River.

Maj. General Ulysses S. Grant

Just a small portion of Vicksburg National Cemetery.  Of the 17,000 Union soldiers buried here, about 13,000 are unknown.  There are also veterans of the Spanish-American war, World Wars I and II and the Korean conflict.  It was closed to burials in 1961.

You can see what remains of a trench dug by the soldiers in the center of the picture.  You will see many more trenches throughout the park.

The U.S.S. Cairo.  A Union ironclad gunboat.  The first vessel in history to be sunk by an electrically detonated torpedo (today called a mine).