Expedition Team: Dave Miller
Date: July 1974
Me and a college friend were headed for my first visit to Washington DC but being a Civil War buff I stopped at this park which preserves two major battlefield sites: the First & Second Battles of Bull Run/Manassas which took place in July 1861 and in August 1862. Skeletal remains from two Union soldiers were found in a surgeon’s burial pit at the park as recent as 2014. I hiked the five mile First Battle of Manassas Loop Trail which took me by beautiful countryside, battlefield, hills and wooded area ,Bull Run Creek (Photo#2), the historic Stone House (Photo#3) and the historic Stone Bridge (Photo#4) . That evening we went to a theater in the town of Manassas and watched “The Exorcist”. I movie was so scary I could hardly sleep in my tent at the campground. In Washington DC after visiting the Lincoln Memorial and a few other sites the city that evening we drove to the White House area (Photo#5) and thousands of people and reporters were outside. Not seeing the news for three days we didn’t realize that President Richard Nixon had just resigned his office as President one hour before we arrived.
