Petersburg Breakthrough Battlefield

Petersburg Breakthrough Battlefield covers 647.4 acres in northeastern Dinwiddie County, Virginia, where Union troops broke the Confederate defensive line protecting Petersburg on April 2, 1865. From October 1864, soldiers of McGowan's South Carolina Brigade and others dug earthworks, rifle pits, artillery redans and dams across the Boisseau and Hart farms, and built winter huts behind the lines. About 1,700 linear feet of those works survive, partly because the marshy ground near Arthur Swamp was unsuitable for farming or development. Archaeologists in 1995 excavated three sunken winter huts, the first of their kind excavated in Virginia, and other sites remain untested. The district also includes the Hart House, a Gothic Revival cottage, and the site of the Harmon house, used briefly as a headquarters by Grant and Meade. Pamplin Historical Park occupies part of the land, with a trail following the Union assault, and its reproduction buildings are counted as noncontributing.