Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield

As I gather my photos from years of National Park exploration, there are many Civil War battlefields among them. These are sacred landscapes that once witnessed unimaginable bloodshed on our own U.S. soil. Missouri’s Wilson’s Creek is one of those places, marking a fiercely divisive battle during the earliest months of the Civil War.

Preserved as Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield near Springfield, Missouri, is the scene of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek that took place on August 10, 1861. This was one of the major engagements west of the Mississippi River where 30,000 Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in a brutal fight that signaled that war in the West would be just as consequential as the battles in Virginia. Here at Wilson’s Creek, the Confederate forces held the field which helped keep Missouri a bitterly contested border state. Among the fallen was Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general killed in combat during the war.  

Recognizing the site’s national importance, Congress authorized the preservation of Wilson’s Creek in 1960 and signed it by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like so many National Historic battlefields across the country, Wilson’s Creek invites us to reflect on a time when our nation was at war with itself.