Where the Appalachian Trail Meets the Civil War

Donna and I closed out the summer of 2026 with a Labor Day hike on the Appalachian Trail. We drove to Washington Monument State Park near Boonsboro, Maryland to start our trek at the stone tower atop South Mountain, which abuts the AT. We had visited the tower, linked to abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated attack of the armory in nearby Harper’s Ferry, on a previous trip (here’s a link to my blog about it).

Hiking on any part of the AT is magical. There’s a community of through-hikers who have trekked the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, either all at once or in segments. (A college buddy and I briefly considered taking it on after graduation, but nothing ever came of it.) While Donna and I are certainly not members of the AT through-hiker community, there’s a thrill even at hiking on the same path where those heartier souls have trod.

Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders, at age 91, last month became the oldest hiker to traverse the entire length of the Maine-to-Georgia trail. (You have to do it within a year for it to count; he would do a leg, then go on with his life for a bit, then do another stretch).

Tara Dower set the fastest known time at 40 days and eight hours, in 2024. Dower, whose trail name (they all seem to have trail names) is “Candy Mama,” had a massive support group that, according to a terrific article in the North Carolina Rabbit Hole:

Planned her mileage
Dressed her
Paced her
Hand-fed her food every half hour, and made sure she was consuming 10,000 calories a day
Squirted water in her mouth
Made sure she was on the trail and moving every morning at 3:30 a.m.
Worked on her feet, which became progressively more gnarly
Emptied her bathroom bag.

Tara likened her role in the trek to a racecar; her friend Megan “Rascal” Wilmarth served as the crew chief, and the many volunteers were the pit crew.

I bring this up because Donna “Badass” and I (“I’m with Badass”) on our Labor Day seven-miler had no pit crew to dress, pace, water, feed or massage us. It was just us and the trail.

Hiking is an almost sacred, mind-cleansing experience. You become stripped of the noise of life – literal and figurative noise. Absent the wail of leaf blowers and mowers, jets and car traffic, TV and social media sounds, the silence gloriously envelops you. You also are divorced from news headlines and the vitriol that currently permeates our culture.

We put on our backpacks and entered the trail. Immediately we were transported to the here and now, to an essential existence where your thoughts are focused on the footpath at your feet and the views around you.

We’ve hiked on bits of the AT a few times, and I’m always surprised by how unassuming it is. Often it is nothing more than a single-file dirt path or a narrow, winding trail in woods or forests. But we have always found it to be well marked and maintained by its army of volunteers.

After hiking for a couple arduous miles – the trail was steep and strewn with rocks and tree roots – we encountered a fine stone church (we learned later it is the St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart Church) where the trail intersects Old National Pike. Shortly after that we came across the Dahlgren Backpacker Campground, which features bathrooms, showers, a camping area, picnic tables, wooden poles to hang your backpacks out of the reach of animals, and grills.

We continued on, and reached Wise’s Field, the only place where the Appalachian Trail intersects a major Civil War battlefield. The Battle for Fox’s Gap was fought on Wise’s Field, an area not much larger than a football field, and claimed hundreds of soldiers’ lives, including two generals who are buried there. That skirmish, fought on Sept. 14, 1862, was part of the larger Battle of South Mountain, the first major Civil War battle in Maryland and which became a critical turning point in the American Civil War. According to the Maryland Park Service, the Union victories at South Mountain and Antietam (fought three days later) led President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

It’s jarring to be blissfully hiking one minute, and the next to be confronted by the scene of a long-ago slaughter. The ghosts of dead soldiers, whose bodies blanketed the killing field that day almost exactly 164 years ago, seemed to rise up in my soul.

After a somber time at Wise’s Field, we tucked back into the trail and continued for a short time before deciding we needed to head back. The return trip was more difficult than going out. We stopped at the Dahlgren campground and collapsed on a picnic table. We wolfed down the peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix we had packed and guzzled water before proceeding. The climb up South Mountain to where we had parked the car was exhausting and our hearts were pounding from exertion when we arrived at the parking lot. We were tired but grateful that we’re still able to take these ambitious trips into the woods and back in time.

We were sore the next day, and took it easy, except to eagerly make arrangements for our next Appalachian Trail adventure.