Wallis House at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park

The Josiah Wallis House was used by Union general Oliver O. Howard as his headquarters during the fighting at Kennesaw Mountain and as a field hospital after the battle. It is now part of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, making it one of only two original structures remaining in the park, the other being the Kolb Farmhouse. Unfortunately, it is in poor condition and not open to the public. In fact, the National Park Service has removed most references to it on maps and on its website.

The house now sits abandoned on an overgrown lot and looks no different than any other abandoned, older house you might run across. A visit to it is only for the most ardent of Civil War fanatics. It is illegal to enter the property, so the house can only be viewed from the street. When I first visited and took the photos on this page in 2014, this was not the case, for at the time the Wallis House was not owned by the National Park Service.

Porch of the Wallis House, part of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park

After General Howard moved on, it wasn’t as if the house was shuttered and remained a time capsule to be unlocked in the future. It was lived in, renovated, and modified until at least the 1960s. The National Park Service hopes to one day renovate it back to the way it was in 1864 and provide period furnishings. However, since the house was first purchased from developers in 2004 by Cobb County, nothing but talk about renovations has occurred. The Wallis House became part of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in 2019, and it has sat rotting away since. A house like this could be built new from scratch in a matter of weeks for probably less than $100,000, yet nothing has been done in over a decade, and restoration estimates back in 2016 were $1 million. In 2010, estimated development cost was $600,000, and yearly maintenance costs were estimated to be $200,000 / year. And as you may have heard, prices haven’t gone down in the last 10 years. The National Park Service can’t even keep up maintenance on the parks it has, and yet here the government wants to spend well over a million dollars on a dilapidated house of little historical value and of little interest to the general public. Wait to Elon hears about this.

I’ve seen many houses in National Parks like the Wallis House where after all the money is spent on renovations, the house might be open to the public once a month for special occasions because the National Park Service can’t afford to hire an extra employee just to greet the few guests who might show up if it were open all the time. The Wallis House isn’t even near the main section of the park, Kennesaw Mountain and the Visitor Center. Just take a look at the Kolb House. It is not open to the public because it is now being used as housing for park Rangers. The Wallis House is more likely to become a million-dollar residence for the park superintendent than it is a historical house open to the public for daily tours.

For those who want to make the drive to see the Wallis House from the street, it is located near the corner of Barrett Parkway and Burnt Hickory Road. You can pull off the street onto the house’s driveway, but go any farther than that and you are trespassing on federal property.

I found this information on the Internet (edited for clarity):

“My grandfather purchased the home back at some time in the 40-50’s. At the time of the purchase there were still doors inside the home with damage from a small skirmish fought on the property and within the home itself. Many floor boards were missing, and the house was in a general state of disrepair. The home was used as a field hospital just before or just after the General moved on, and the property across the Burnt Hickory Road was used as a field cemetery. In the 50’s, work was undertaken to exhume those bodies, as well as parts and pieces that were amputated from victims of the warfare and found in the crawlspace of the home. Those bodies/parts found were interred in the Confederate Cemetery in Marietta.

It was not uncommon at all during the 60s and on for my grandfather to have to chase off relic seekers from the property surrounding the house, which was lined with trenches and earthworks. There were many fine relics unearthed there, and many of them can be found at the Big Shanty Museum in Kennesaw, GA.

As the result of the work of one of my Uncles, the house is on the historical register. After the death of my grandfather, the home and property were sold to a land developer. It was the last, largest tract of undeveloped land in West Cobb that was not in the inventory of land owned by the Park Department. Unfortunately, the property was developed and the trenches and earthworks are now lost to history. Fortunately, due to the actions of my uncle, the home cannot be torn down without consequence and will be there into perpetuity for others to enjoy, slated to be used as a community center for the neighborhood that is now in place.

The current home layout is the result of an add-on my grandfather made. The “back” porch area was made into another room, and the bathroom was added on as a modern convenience, along with running water. Prior to that, the original spot for the Civil War era outhouse was still in use, although not the same building, and the original well is still located just off the south wall.

— Submitted May 24, 2011, by Martin Jordan of McDonough, Georgia.

Wallis House, now part of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park

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