Cover: The Stone House. From a wartime photograph
Manassas
(Bull Run)
National Battlefield Park
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
March 3, 1849
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
DOUGLAS McKAY, Secretary
National Park Service
Conrad L. Wirth, Director
REPRINT 1953 U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1953 O-F—237985
Here was fought the opening field battle of the Civil War and here a year later a Confederate victory led to Lee’s first invasion of the North.
Manassas National Battlefield Park commemorates two great battles of the War Between the States fought in the vicinity of Bull Run, a small stream in northern Virginia about 26 miles southwest of Washington, D. C. The military significance of the Manassas area lay in the junction of two railroads. The Orange and Alexandria Railway, which offered the only direct rail connection between Washington and Richmond, was joined there by the Manassas Gap Railroad, a direct route to the strategically important Shenandoah Valley.