Four of the Civil War's most brutal battles — Fredericksburg (1862), Chancellorsville (1863, where Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men), the Wilderness (1864), and Spotsylvania Court House (1864) — were fought in this central Virginia corridor, producing more than 100,000 total casualties. The park's 8,374 acres across multiple units preserve some of the best surviving Civil War earthworks in the country.