Last month I posted pictures of a whole lot of Civil War and Reconstruction sites from a Confederate cemetery in Columbus, Ohio, to General Grant’s home in St. Louis, Missouri. Every day there was new pictures from Lincoln’s Kentucky birthplace, to New Salem, Illinois where Lincoln came of age. My wife was in every post, and friends asked me how I got her to agree to visit all of these sites. I didn’t. For my birthday, without me asking for it, Michele told me she was giving me a trip to the Midwest to see Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois and we could stop to see sites along the way. Since my health is declining, she did all the driving from New York to New Jersey and then on to Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois, and them back again. She did over 2,300 miles of driving in six days. On our third day of exploring, we visited Camp Nelson National Monument about a half-hour south of Lexington, Kentucky. Its address is 6614 Old Danville Road Loop 2, Nicholasville, KY, United States, Kentucky
Camp Nelson was set up train newly recruited white Union soldiers, to protect the Hickman Bridge over the Kentucky River, and to serve as a supply depot for Union forces heading into Tennessee. Over time, it also housed a large military hospital, a prison, a recruiting and training ground for the Black United States Colored Troops, and a safe place for Black refugees escaping their enslavers.
One of the great resources at Camp Nelson is the staff. They not only educate visitors to the camp, they also do educational outreach to the local community. Above I am with National Park Service (NPS) historian Steve Phan and supervisory Range Brendan Kane. They were incredibly helpful in deepening my own understanding of the site. I also met with several volunteers and other staff as well as with Superintendent Ernie Price, all of who took time to answer my questions and to direct me to other sites at the park. We need the staff at the National Park Service to keep our history alive during our lifetimes and those of our children and grandchildren. My wife and I try to call every month to our Congresspeople to keep providing adequate funding for the NPS.
By the way, after my wife sent me the picture above, I lost nine pounds in two weeks. A good incentive to lose weight is to see yourself with other people who look the way I used to look thirty years ago!
