Shiloh Battlefield Tour Map (click to enlarge)
A tour road winds through Shiloh National Military Park and takes visitors to the locations of the April 1862 battle’s most important events. The road is open to vehicle, bicycle, and foot traffic, though it is probably a little too long to walk (13 miles). The tour consists of 22 stops, and the route is included in the park brochure that is available at the Visitor Center. Numbered posts mark each stop, and information panels give details about the events that took place. Many of the panels include battle maps that help you orient yourself as to where you are in the overall scheme of things. For even more information, you can download the free Shiloh Battle App for Apple and Android phones.
Allow three hours for the tour, provided you want to spend the proper amount of time to study and understand the battle. The Shiloh Battlefield Tour has 22 stops that average about 5 minutes per stop, plus you have about an hour of drive time and time required to get out of the car and walk to some of the sites.
For a virtual tour of the Shiloh battlefield, National Park Planner has created a web page for each stop that includes a description and photos of what you will find. You can use the menu below to jump to a particular tour stop. Once on the stop’s web page, a menu at the bottom of the page allows you to navigate to the next or previous tour stop.
Tour Stop 1: Grant’s Last Line
Tour Stop 2: The Confederate Monument
Tour Stop 3: Duncan Field
Tour Stop 4: Ruggles’ Battery
Tour Stop 5: Shiloh Church
Tour Stop 6: Rhea Field
Tour Stop 7: Fraley Field
Tour Stop 8: Confederates Gain Ground
Tour Stop 9: Invasion of the Union Camps
Tour Stop 10: Hornet’s Nest
Tour Stop 11: Shiloh’s Casualties
Tour Stop 12: Jones Field
Tour Stop 13: Woolf Field
Tour Stop 14: Water Oaks Pond
Tour Stop 15: Daniel Davis Wheat Field
Tour Stop 16: Field Hospital
Tour Stop 17: Death of General Johnston
Tour Stop 18: The Peach Orchard
Tour Stop 19: Bloody Pond
Tour Stop 20: Dill Branch Ravine
Tour Stop 21: Grant’s Left Flank
Tour Stop 22: Pittsburg Landing
Different types of information is available to you on the battlefield. The most useful to the general public are the information panels.
Typical information panel at Shiloh National Military Park
The second type of information you have access to is what are known as “tablets.” These contain information on topics such as what troops were at a certain location at a certain time, where they moved, how many people were in the unit, and casualty reports. These tablets were erected when the park was created in 1894 and were meant to document in detail the events that took place on the battlefield. They were intended for historians and military students (nearly all of the Civil War battlefields parks were originally under the control of the War Department and were only later transferred to the National Park Service). You may read a few as you tour the battlefield, but unless you are a true Civil War buff, you will soon lose interest in them. Tablets can be found on all Civil War battlefields in the National Park system.
While you most likely will not read all of the tablets, you should at least familiarize yourself with what they symbolize. By remembering what the shapes and colors mean, you can quickly recognize what army was at a particular location, what day it was there, and which direction it was facing. There is a tablet exhibit outside of the Visitor Center, with one tablet explaining what the shapes and colors represent. This key is also printed on the park brochure.
Tablet at Shiloh National Military Park
Key to the meaning of the tablets at Shiloh National Military Park
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Last updated on February 5, 2022
