Key Terrain
The Battle of the Wilderness
The fighting in the Wilderness centered on two thoroughfares: the Orange Turnpike and the Orange Plank Road. Between them yawned a gaping void of dense trees and brush, broken only by a few fields and the track of the Parker's Store Road, still visible 50 yards to your left. The most important clearing was the Chewning farm. If the Union army could seize this clearing, it would be in position to divide the Confederate forces and defeat them individually.
Gen. Samuel W. Crawford's division of the Union Fifth Corps held the Chewning farm on May 5, but it had to abandon the position to support Union troops fighting astride the Orange Turnpike. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's Ninth Corps tried to penetrate the gap the next morning but became bogged down in the heavy woods. By the time it reached the Chewning farm, the clearing was firmly in Confederate hands. The Union army's best chance for victory had vanished.
Marker can be reached from Hill-Ewell Drive, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
