Fort Donelson National Battlefield-Tennessee — Attraction in Dover

Visit Date: August 26, 2017 Unfortunately, the visitor center was under construction when I went. It was a last-minute decision to go---a beautiful day for a quick road trip from Clarksville. The natural landscape is beautiful, which makes it even more melancholic knowing what happened here.

My Background: I minored in Civil War history at a major state university in the deep south, and most of my studies focused on the "major" theatre of war: Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, with a few key "outsider" battles thrown in for good measure (e.g., Vicksburg, Sherman's March to the Sea, etc.). After that, I lived in Northern Virginia for several years, so I've had occasion to visit Gettysburg, Sharpsburg/Antietam, Manassas/Bull Run, Harper's Ferry, and many others multiple times. To call them awe inducing and impressive is to understate their value. When I moved to Middle Tennessee twenty-plus years ago, I wasn't well-versed in the Western theatre of the war. It's taken me quite some time to get around to it, but in the past few years, I've visited several of the major TN sites, including Franklin (what's left of it), Stone's River, Shiloh, and now Fort Donelson. For a smaller (geographically) park, it's well preserved, and the driving tour is well laid out and marked. The signage at each stop on the tour makes it easy to see where and why to stop. However, I must say that I was concerned by the fact that nearly all of the informational markers tell only one side of what happened here---the Confederate side. As this is a U.S. National Battlefield Park, both sides need to be represented---after all, Americans fought on both sides.. Yet almost all of the stops on the driving tour marked with signs that only detail what the Confederate soldiers were doing and where their lines and fortifications were. I would love to see more attention paid to telling both sides of the tragedy that occurred here.

As previously mentioned, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to visit Fort Donelson, and I fully intend to revisit again once the remodeled/new visitors' center is open so that I can gain the full experience...

Fort Donelson National Battlefield is a mixed experience. The main visitors center is still under rehabilitation and park information can be found in the double wide. The maps, driving tour app, trail markers and historic preservation of the Fort area are excellent. Decisions about what to preserve made in the 1920’s and modern development impact today’s visitors. The Confederate left and Lick Creek breakout remind me of the Siege Road of Petersburg, if you ignore the houses you can get an idea of the terrain. I did not have as much time as I would want and could have dedicated a full day to the battlefield. The Fort proper, Upper and Lower Water Batteries are well preserved with good marking. I recommend walking the Donelson trail if you have the time, just to understand the terrain that C. F. Smith assaulted against the 30th Tennessee. The Battery Trail between Grave’s Battery and Greene’s Battery gives an opportunity to follow the Confederate works on their left where the most significant action of 15 February took place. Don’t skip the Dover Hotel or the Fort Donelson National Cemetery, the Park Service has done an excellent job at preservation of both of these sites. The drive to Fort Henry is debatable unless you have time walk the trail to the outer rifle pits as everything else in under Lake Tennessee. Before crossing the lake to Fort Heiman check in with the Park because the road to the Fort has been closed for some time and not much work has been done to make the Federal...

We had a great time at the Fort. Very impressive to see an earthen fort at such as scale still in relatively good condition, though some restoration work has been done to preserve the mounds from eroding. The museum was closed for remodeling, and a stand in double wide was used for the park museum showing some artifacts, though not many. Many of the information plaques were in very rough condition with many of them being barely readable. I did see some negative reviews related to some of the areas not being handicap accessible. To be fair, they are not wrong, however the fort is still mostly original or near original and handicap accessibility was not much of thought for construction back in 1862. The Dover hotel part of the park was handicap accessible. There are also many hiking/running trails available.

There were also a couple negative comments related to there not being any major battle there so the historical significance isn't that great. I would say that is mostly ignorance of people considering Grant earned his nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant there as well as this opening up the south for further attack onto Nashville, crippling the South. Those moments were very important to the Union, who had not been able to have any major victories to that point.

Overall, we enjoyed our visit. It was a beautiful day and the park staff were...