West 2016: Badlands NP Scenery

Day 4: August 8, 2016

Badlands was one of the places I was most excited about on our trip.  I love desert landscapes, and was really looking forward to seeing the spectacular colors of the eroded buttes and the prairie grasses.  Badlands National Park did not disappoint.

Mom and me with the Badlands Sign! Can you tell by my hair that it was windy?

After arriving at the park, and snapping the obligatory poses with the entrance sign, my mom and I stopped at the first viewpoint – the Big Badlands Overlook.  The views here were amazing, with the buttes showing all their beautiful colors and the grass down below (pictures don’t really do it justice).  We were able to get some great photos of the scenery and enjoy our first looks at the park.  But wow, was it hot!  It was hovering between 95 and 97 degrees!  Wow!  So of course, I have a very red face in all my photos that day, from the heat!

Mom and me – Selfies overlooking the buttes

 

Piddles enjoying the view of the Badlands

We stopped at the Ben Reifel Visitor’s Center and had a picnic lunch outside.  The picnic tables have space-agey sun covers over them to protect you from the heat – you do have to be careful about pinning your stuff down so it doesn’t blow away though!  There was a bit of a breeze the day we were there, which of course made the heat slightly more bearable.  Then we went inside and watched the park movie and checked out the exhibits in the Visitor’s Center.  They had a great exhibit on the pre-historic animals and fossil record within the park.

Some of the spires towering above the prairie grasses

After the Visitor’s Center, we headed out to see more of the park.  We stopped at lots of the viewpoints and I did some short hikes.  I hiked up the hill at the Saddle Pass trail head while my mom waited at the car, doing some sketching and journaling.  It was a short but very steep uphill climb to some great views, made much more challenging by the fact that the terrain was loose scree, so I slid back down a little bit at several points.  I didn’t end up going all the way up the hill, but I managed to get high enough to enjoy the scenery, and for the car to look like a little dot in the distance below.

The view from near the top of Saddle Pass – our car a speck in the distance

Mom and I also walked the 1/2 mile Fossil Walk.  It is a flat boardwalk trail that has interpretive plaques showing the types of fossils that have been found in the park.  It was neat seeing what is buried underneath the layers here, and getting a close up view of the colors in the landscape.  Fossils found here include dogs, alligators, rhinoceroses, and ammonites.  There were lots of kids climbing on the buttes here – they had a lot of energy for such a hot day!

Me on the Fossil Walk

The Yellow Mounds Overlook and the Pinnacles Overlook were fairly self-explanatory.  Although they did promise rattlesnakes, and the only one we saw all day was one that was dead and flat in the road (sorry I didn’t get a photo…).

The Yellow Mounds at Badlands – yellow indeed!

 

They promised! But Badlands did not deliver…

As sad as it was though that we didn’t see any rattlesnakes, we did see plenty of wildlife at Badlands – I’ll be posting about them next!

 

The Grand Tour – Day 8 – Andersonville National Cemetery

After we visited the Andersonville Prison, we drove over to the other side of the Andersonville National Historic Site property, which is home to Andersonville National Cemetery.  The cemetery was born in February 1864 with the first graves of 12,920 Union soldiers who would eventually die at Andersonville Prison, and it continues to accept new burials of service members today.

In the cemetery, the graves of the Andersonville prisoners are much more tightly packed together than in a typical cemetery. The deaths were occurring with such frequency (close to 100 prisoners per day during the summer of 1864) that they buried the dead in trenches, shoulder to shoulder, instead of in individual graves.  Each grave was marked with a simple wooden marker and a number.  Dorance Atwater, a Union POW at Andersonville, was responsible for keeping the list for the prison matching the grave numbers with the names of the dead.  He sat next to the camp commander, Henry Wirz.  He took a risk and kept a separate list of the dead and their grave numbers, because he was concerned that the official list he kept for the Confederates would not be turned over at the end of the war.   As it turned out, his concern had some merit.

After the war, Dorance Atwater smuggled his list out of the prison and took it to the U.S. Government, which shockingly, didn’t pay much attention.  So, he went to the press and his list was published by Horace Greeley, who had founded the New York Tribune.  The attention the story received put Atwater in touch with Clara Barton, who ran the Office of Missing Soldiers in Washington, D.C., and later founded the Red Cross.

Clara Barton organized a detail to match the grave numbers with the names of soldiers who had died, and Dorance Atwater went back to Andersonville in the summer of 1865 to help. Thanks to his list, only about 400 of the Andersonville prisoner graves are unidentified soldiers.  The detail that summer marked all of the graves that they could with a wooden marker containing the names and states of the soldiers who occupied them, and marked ‘Unknown Soldier’ on those few that they could not identify.

A Few of the Unknown U.S. Soldiers at Andersonville National Cemetery

All of the graves are now simple marble, carved to replace the original wooden markers and placed in 1898 and 1899. All of the markers are the same, except one. The grave of Lewis Tuttle, a Sergeant from Maine, is adorned with a stone dove. Nobody knows who placed it there, or when. It is one of the enduring mysteries of the cemetery.  But clearly, Sergeant Tuttle was loved by someone.

Grave Number 12196 – Sergeant Tuttle of Maine

A Line of Andersonville Graves – With Sergeant Tuttle

The cemetery today is peaceful, like the prison site, and has many beautiful shade trees and low brick walls.  The day we were there, there was a service, but the cemetery is large enough to walk around and not feel like you are disturbing the service.  The audio tour we got back at the Visitor’s Center offers a great history of the cemetery and who is buried there, with stories of brothers and heroes, both during and after the Civil War.

Andersonville Prison Graves – With Later Graves Behind – Notice the Much Wider Spacing on the Later Burials

Andersonville was our one activity for the day, and you can read about our visit to the Andersonville Prison site here.  After our visit, we headed out on the way to our stop for the night, Macon, Georgia. We stayed at the LaQuinta there, which had a pool! And a million high school baseball players. We got there at about 3:30, so we had some time to lounge by the pool for awhile before we needed to go find dinner. For dinner, we went downtown and stumbled upon a café, La Dolce Vita, which had a great tomato and red pepper bisque and a decent Calzone. Jon had a turkey wrap and an Avocado Salad topped with crab. Delicious!

While in downtown Macon, we saw signs everywhere saying that “businesses are still open during filming.” And there were a lot of parked cars downtown – way more than seemed right for a business district in the evening. We asked our waitress and found out why – they were filming the movie 42, starring Harrison Ford. It is a movie about the life story of Jackie Robinson – sounds kind of interesting, even though I’m not that into sports movies. Unfortunately, we didn’t see Harrison Ford or anybody else that looked remotely famous. But I can at least say, “I was there when they were filming that!”

After dinner, we headed back to the pool for a bit more pool time on our last night in the South.

The Grand Tour – Day 8 – Andersonville Prison

We got up and while I got ready to go, Jon enjoyed some time down at the exercise room at the Windsor Hotel (he did say it was too hot though).  Then we checked out of the hotel and since the hotel restaurant was almost done with their breakfast period, we asked where else there was to get breakfast in the area. The manager recommended Carter’s, which he said served an authentic southern breakfast. We checked it out. It turned out to be Carter’s Fried Chicken, and they did have a breakfast menu. I’m not exactly sure I would describe it as authentic though – or at least authentic southern breakfast isn’t much different than all the authentic northern breakfasts I’ve had. Scrambled eggs, sausage, Wonderbread, and substitute grits for hashbrowns. Carter’s breakfast was decent but nothing fancy, cafeteria style, served up on a Styrofoam plate with plastic utensils. But it filled us up and we were on our way.

Like I said before, our destination for the day was Andersonville, the confederate Civil War prisoner of war camp. It was called Fort Sumter during the war, but in the later years it became known as Andersonville, named after the closest community. It was located there because it was sufficiently remote as to prevent much chance of a Union raid on the camp, and the community of Andersonville only had about 20 residents during the Civil War, so there wasn’t much chance of their complaining too loudly about having a POW camp in their backyard.

We got to Andersonville close to 10:30 in the morning, and went to the Visitor’s Center. The Visitor’s Center has a museum honoring Prisoners of War from all conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in, from the Revolutionary War to the present. We started out by watching their half hour film from the perspective of POWs. It was a very powerful collection of interviews with people who were POWs going back to World War II, detailing their experiences, both the horrors they lived through and the joy they experienced upon their release.  The museum there is well done and offers a lot of information on the POW experience throughout the ages.  It is a National Historic Site (and I got a stamp!), and it is all free of charge!  They do welcome donations, for the fantastic work they do to preserve this history for future generations.

Andersonville National Historic Site Visitor’s Center

After the film and our visit to the Museum, we checked out the free audio tour from the Visitor’s Center and headed out to see the prison site (just ask for the audio tour at the front desk). The audio tour has a tour of the prison and the cemetery, so you can head over to the cemetery after you are done with the prison and get some good information there too. I’ll talk about the cemetery in my next post.

Fort Sumter was located in this remote area of Georgia to prevent Union troops from being able to easily mount an assault on the prison to free the POWs. The site was originally 16.5 acres, with a boggy creek running through it to provide a water source for prisoners. The camp was designed for about 6,000 people. A few months after the prison opened in February 1864, officials realized that the original 16.5 acre site was not large enough, and the camp was hastily expanded to 26.5 acres. Unfortunately, there was no new source of water in the expanded area.  The expanded prison was intended for about 10,000 prisoners, but by June 1864, there were about 26,000 prisoners housed there.  At the height of overcrowding, the population was 32,000 prisoners.  In all, 45,000 prisoners passed through its gates in the 14 months that it was open.

During construction of the prison, officials reasoned that prisoners could access the upstream area of the creek for drinking water, and use the downstream portion for their latrine. What the officials didn’t count on, however, was that the water had already been tainted by kitchen facilities upstream, so the water was polluted by the time it ran into the camp.  So much for that idea…  The camp was constructed with a stockade wall and guard towers built along the wall for guards to monitor the prison population.  19 feet within the stockade wall was a light fence that became known as the ‘deadline’, because if you were seen on the other side of that fence, you would be shot on sight.  Therefore, of the 26.5 acres of the camp, a significant section of the real estate was not even available to the prisoners.

This picture shows the entire 26.5 acre prison camp – Camp Sumter – Home to 45,000 Union soldiers over a period of 14 months

When the Confederates were building the camp, they cut down all the trees that were on the site, both to use for the stockade walls, and to prevent the prisoners from being able to use the trees as cover for an escape. The unfortunate consequence was that there was absolutely no shelter from the elements on the camp grounds. Prisoners could use whatever they could get a hold of to build a shelter for themselves, but there were not a lot of available resources. As we drove around the site and got out of the car to explore more, it was apparent that this camp would have been unbearable in the hot summer sun. And it would only get worse as the summer got hotter. And the Georgia winter would not have been pleasant either, dressed in rags with no shelter and inadequate food.

A Reconstruction of the Stockade Wall – Jon is Reading the Sign

Re-Creations of Prisoner Shelters – They Called the SheBangs

Due to a combination of polluted water, inadequate food and nutrition and lack of shelter from the elements, prisoners began to die in large numbers shortly after the camp was opened. In all, almost 13,000 of the 45,000 prisoners at Camp Sumter died during the 14 months that the camp was operating. If you were lucky enough to be healthy for awhile, you still had to contend with the Andersonville Raiders, a gang of immoral prisoners who weren’t above using theft and violence to obtain additional resources for themselves.  They were armed mostly with clubs, and would steal food and valuables in order to survive – killing the weakened soldiers who tried to resist.

Eventually in July 1864, the Andersonville Raiders were captured by their fellow prisoners, and the camp commander Henry Wirz allowed the prisoners to arrest and try the Raiders, sentence them and carry out their sentences. Sentences ranged from minor punishments like being put in stocks, to more severe punishments such as running the gauntlet – I had to look this up – it is where you have to run back and forth between two rows of soldiers while they strike you with clubs or sticks as you run by.

Apparently some of the Raiders who were made to run the gauntlet got off with only a few blows to the head, but a couple of them were beaten so badly that they later died of their injuries. Six of the Andersonville Raiders were hanged.  The prisoners refused to allow the Raiders to be buried with the rest of the prisoners who died honorably, so the Raiders’ graves are separated in the cemetery from the rest.  At least after the trials and punishments, prisoners didn’t have to worry about being victimized by their own fellow prisoners.  I’m sure it was small comfort.

As the situation with the water got worse, prisoners prayed to God and were blessed with a natural spring that was unearthed in August 1964 by a lightning strike during a torrential thunderstorm. Providence Spring, as it came to be called, had cool, clean water that flowed at the rate of about 10 gallons per minute, enough to provide enough clean water for everyone in the camp. It continues to flow today, and it is now enshrined in a granite building. Ironically, park rangers have marked the spring as having unpotable water – I’m not sure if that is just to limit liability, or because the structure contains lead pipes, or because the spring has been polluted now too. I didn’t test the waters, so to speak.

The Building Erected Around the Providence Spring by Veteran’s Groups in 1901

A View of Providence Spring From the Stockade Wall

Sadly, although Sherman’s troops were within about 20 miles of Camp Sumter during their March to the Sea, the prisoners were not liberated at that time. In fact, they had to endure another miserable winter (1864) and were not released until April 1865 when the war ended. Although conditions had improved somewhat, it was still considered a horrific experience.

Henry Wirz, the camp commander, was the only ranking officer who was executed for war crimes after the Civil War. People were outraged when word reached the north at the end of the war about the conditions the prisoners were subjected to. Lincoln had just been assassinated, and there was not a lot of sympathy for Wirz’s claims that he had done the best he could with the resources he had available. To Wirz’ credit, he had sent a letter signed by many of the prisoners requesting that the North re-establish prisoner exchanges, but the Union would not.  At one point, the Confederates even offered to release the prisoners, if only the Union would send ships to the Georgia coast to pick them up.

Ironically, New York’s Elmyra prison had a similar death rate among the Confederate soldiers who were imprisoned there, but the South was in no position to punish the North, having lost the war. I also learned that many of Andersonville’s prison guards suffered the same malnutrition and exposure to the elements as the prisoners, and many of the guards died too. You can draw your own conclusions about whether you believe that the Confederates intentionally starved the soldiers, or if was a cruel result of the circumstances of the time, with even Confederate soldiers and citizens going hungry.

Andersonville prison and cemetery is now a very peaceful place. I wrote about the cemetery in a separate post; you can find it here.  While we were there, we saw only about a half dozen others touring the grounds.  Actually, I was surprised that there were so few people there. On the grounds – it is very quiet; you can only hear the sounds of nature – there are no sounds of traffic, industry or city life. If you didn’t know what happened here, you would never be able to guess that a place that seems so serene now could have been the site of so much pain and suffering. It was a humbling place to visit.

The Grand Tour – Day 7 – Americus, Georgia!

After Fort Pulaski, we got on the road to our next destination – Americus, Georgia. Americus is a small town of about 17,000, which is only about 10 miles from Andersonville National Historic Site. Yes, the Andersonville of Civil War Prisoner of War camp fame, which was to be our destination the next morning. The long drive was a collection of boring freeways and picturesque back roads. We passed lots of cute brick homes with front porches, lots of singlewide trailers, a Mennonite Church, and one house that appeared to have been struck by a tornado. The entire front half of the home was sheared away, and there was furniture and debris all over. It made me glad we don’t have very many tornados in the Northwest (although we do have a few).

Once we got to Americus, we checked into our home for the night, the Best Western Windsor Hotel. The Windsor is a historic hotel, built in 1892 to attract folks from the north who wanted to winter where it was warm. It originally had 100 rooms, but after the renovation, it has 53 guest rooms, none of which are alike. The hotel has a grand 3 story lobby, and you can walk around the landing on the upper floors and look down at the lobby. Lots of famous people have stayed there over the years, including former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eugene Debs (the labor leader), Jessica Tandy and former President Jimmy Carter and his wife.  The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places too.

Windsor Hotel – Built 1892 – Victorian (Queen Anne) Architectural Style With Moorish Elements

The Lobby of the Windsor Hotel

Rumor has it that Al Capone also stayed there, and had an armed guard posted at the base of the turret suite where he stayed. And it has some ghosts. Floyd Lowery was a doorman who worked at the hotel for over 40 years and is still around. Apparently he is a friendly ghost, still wanting to serve the guests who see him.  Although Floyd didn’t drink, the pub at the hotel is now named for him.  And a woman and her daughter were murdered in the early 1900s, pushed down the elevator shaft from the third floor. It is said that the woman’s reflection can be seen in the mirror in the hallway of the third floor, and the little girl can be heard running up and down the hallways playing. We didn’t see or hear anything in our third floor room, although it was on the opposite side of the hotel from the elevator.

The Windsor Hotel Still Has its Original Phone Booth!

The hotel is gorgeous – the renovation did a good job of preserving the historic features of the hotel, and was nicely appointed with a down duvet (actually a bit hot for the weather though!). We enjoyed our stay, having dinner in the pub restaurant, where I had the best fish burger I’ve ever eaten! The patty was made from lobster, crab and fish, and was just full of big chunks of seafood! Jon had the salmon satay with apple slaw, which was also delicious. We sat out on the pub’s second floor veranda and watched the thunderstorm from beneath the veranda roof.  The lightning was incredible – it was so close and we had an excellent vantage point!  It was a nice end to a great day.