Special programs at Manassas National Battlefield Park June 13-14

Manassas National Battlefield Park will offer special programs this weekend in recognition of the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Bull Run and Groveton Monuments. 

On Saturday, June 13, at 7 p.m., park ranger Christy Forman will offer a guided walking tour of monuments on Henry Hill, the site of the heaviest fighting during the First Battle of Manassas.

The tour, “From Memories to Monuments: 150 Years of Commemoration on Henry Hill,” will highlight the significance of the Bull Run Monument and explore the impulses that led to memorializing the fighting at Manassas. 

The program will start on the grounds of the Henry Hill Visitor Center and will last approximately 75 minutes.

On Sunday, June 14, at 1 p.m., Dr. Michael Panhorst will offer an illustrated lecture, “To the Patriots Who Fell: The Union Monuments at Manassas.”  The lecture will be held in the Henry Hill Visitor Center auditorium. 

Dr. Panhorst, a historian of art and architecture, has lectured and published widely about monuments and memorials, and his photographs have been published in Civil War Art, Sculpture Review, and Sculpture magazine.

His photo essay on the earliest Civil War battlefield monuments was published in Southern Cultures in November 2014, and Kent State University Press published his Memorial Art and Architecture of Vicksburg National Military Park in January 2015. 

The program will last approximately one hour.

The Bull Run and Groveton Monuments were erected at Manassas by Union soldiers and dedicated on June 11, 1865, nine weeks after Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  The monuments are among the earliest existing memorials to be erected on a Civil War battlefield. 

The Henry Hill Visitor Center is located at 6511 Sudley Road in Manassas.  For more information on the park, contact the Visitor Center at 703-361-1339, or visit the park website at http://www.nps.gov/mana or Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/manassasbattlefield .