Champion Hill

The battle of Champion Hill is a bit disjointed to tour.  The fighting occured along a few main roads and is a bit far apart.  There is not one connected preserved battlefield to tour.  So instead you drive along one route, then another with limited areas to walk the ground.  Not that this is a horrible thing.  It still took us a few hours to tour the battlefield as we got out quite often to view things.  We followed the Blue & Grey magazine's tour which is quite detailed and good.

 

The Coker house across the road from where Confederate general Lloyd Tilghman was killed.  There are many plaques in the yard explaining the campaign.

Then across the road is where Tilghman was killed.  I've always found him interesting because of his service at Fort Henry.  He could have escaped to Fort Donelson but he stayed with a small force to formally surrender the fort. 

Then the view down the road from Tilghman's monument.  This is the view the Confederates would have had.  Notice the high ground in the distance.

And the spot where Tilghman's monument is.

Our next main stop was the Champion House site.  We had just parked along the main road when Sid Champion, descendent of the Champions that the battle is named after, came along.  He gave us a bit of back story and told us how to tour the ground better.  This was an amazing lucky encounter that helped us see the battlefield a bit better.  First we walked up the hill to the original house site, now near a modern church.

Then we detoured down another road to these monuments.

And we might have stopped here as there was a gate across the old road.  But we had been told we could go down the road so we did.  This area is really rough, thick forest and steep hills.