Valley Foundation Buys ‘Key Point’ At Fisher’s Hill
By Deborah Fitts
July 2005

FISHER’S HILL, Va. — The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation has purchased a 25-acre portion of the Fisher’s Hill battlefield that includes a line of earthworks protecting the wartime Valley Pike.

“It’s an incredible piece of property,” declared Howard Kittell, executive director of the nonprofit. The site represented “a key strategic point” in Valley operations for most of the war.

The steeply sloping ground sits at the corner of Route 11, the old turnpike, and Battlefield Road, It has commanding views eastward to the northern end of Massanutten Mountain, the distant Blue Ridge, and the Shenandoah River bottom.

The earthworks on the property are part of a chain built by Confederates across the narrowest part of the Valley, from the Allegheny Mountains in the west to Massanutten, to control movement along the Valley Pike. Confederates held the line for most of the war.

The parcel also includes bridge abutments over Tumbling Run that date from the war, along with a portion of the original turnpike roadbed and stone retaining walls.

The foundation bought the land, which includes a 1950s home, for the appraised value of $547,000. The owners, from Montana, had purchased it last year with the intention of developing it, Kittell said, “but when they found out it was in the core area of the battlefield, they approached us to sell.”

The owners gave the foundation only 60 days to pull the deal off. The foundation secured a mortgage and made the purchase April 11. With two years to pay the mortgage off, Kittell said he would seek grants and approach donors.

The property is rolling, open meadowland with woods along the edges, similar to its wartime appearance, Kittell said. It is two miles from the major portion of preserved and interpreted battlefield. Kittell said the foundation will begin planning for parking and pedestrian access.

Richard Kleese, an advisory board member and active local historian, alerted the foundation to the property. Overall there are about 600 acres preserved at Fisher’s Hill, including land saved by the former Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (now Civil War Preservation Trust) and donated to Shenandoah County. The Valley foundation’s first purchase was a 22-acre hilltop that served as a Union artillery position and command post for Gen. Philip Sheridan.