There's something innately fascinating about walking in historic sites. To be perfectly frank, I am not a history buff nor have I ever been. In fact, whenever I was with my family at a historic site as a kid, I would ignore every sign, plaque, and other information that required reading. If I was going to learn, I wanted it to be exclusively from the visual sights to behold, not a few paragraphs of information. Truth be told, I still rarely read the informational signs and plaques posted throughout parks and historic sites. It's not that I have that same mentality as when I was a kid, but I much prefer to just walk, explore, and take in everything myself rather than feel like I'm taking a class or history lesson (though I am grateful that this information is present to teach visitors more about the location and its history).
I find historic sites are so fascinating then because even if I don't know anything about the history itself (and sometimes am not all that interested to learn it), it's interesting to know that so much happened on the very ground you're walking on some centuries ago, and that's the same case with Pickett's Mill Battlefield Site. I did actually read some of the signs I came across while visiting, mostly to help create that image in my mind about what the Confederate and Union soldiers were doing at the time- where they slept, waited to engage the other, and of course, where they actually fought.
Pickett's Mill Battlefield has only a handful of trails, which all eventually connect to each other at some point or another, and there are not as many astonishing landmarks to behold as some other historic sites, but that just allowed me to explore the majority of what it had to offer, and what it does have to offer is definitely worth checking out. Pickett's Mill Battlefield is 765 acres, so it's not incredibly large, but it does consist of 4 miles worth of trails, an 1800s era pioneer cabin, picnic areas, and a visitor's center that also acts as a museum. [1] One of the highlights of the trails is walking alongside the battlefield site, a ravine. The trail is a little more difficult to traverse because it's steep and rocky, but the experience is surreal knowing that hundreds of soldiers fought on each side of the ravine and in between and died.
Unfortunately the visitor's center was closed when I went (it seems that it's only open on weekends for the time being), but thankfully all of the trails were open. I hiked 3 out of the 4 trails, and I would definitely be interested to hike that last one at some point in time. If you're interested in Civil War history or just appreciate what historic sites have to offer, I definitely recommend putting Pickett's Mill Battlefield on your list!
[1] https://gastateparks.org/PickettsMillBattlefield
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