Entrance to Fort Haskell at Petersburg National Battlefield

EASTERN FRONT DRIVING TOUR

STOP 6:  Fort Haskell

Allow 5 minutes for a visit

The sixth stop on the Eastern Front Driving Tour at Petersburg National Battlefield is at Fort Haskell, a fort built by the Union army after occupying the area east of Petersburg following the failed attempt to seize the city on June 15-18, 1864. Remnants of Fort Haskell’s earthen walls still remain, and you can walk into the fort and read a wayside exhibit about the events that took place here, but that’s it. A visit takes all of five minutes.

After the Confederates attacked and captured Fort Stedman (Stop 5) on March 25, 1865, they tried to roll back the Union lines both to the east and south in order to widen the gap they had created in the Union line. Fort Haskell stood in the path of their southern advance. It was bombarded by Confederate artillery from Fort Stedman and, under the assumption that it had fallen to the Confederates, also by Union artillery to the south.

When the Confederates soldiers eventually charged the fort just after dawn, the infantrymen and three cannon at Haskell opened fired and stopped them in their tracks. The attack came from the ravine in front of the fort—that’s as far as the Confederates got. For a view of the ravine, you’ll need to step out of the fort because the walls are too high to see over, and you aren’t supposed to climb on them.