My dad is a big Civil War buff, and he and mom were visiting from up north this weekend.  So I hunted up Geoffrey R. Walden's General's Tour of the defenses of Cincinnati from the "Panic On The Ohio" in 1862.  He's put together a tour of the whole ring of defenses constructed around the city when Heth's troops came north looking for trouble in the early part of the Civil War.  It's a great tour, though I'd recommend giving it a dry run before you try to take out-of-towners on it...

 

Anyway, we hit a few spots on it, then went to the new James A. Ramage Civil War Museum in Fort Wright, on the site of Battery Hooper.  (BTW, many thanks to Issue430's roommate, who gave us directions - Walden's tour was published long before the museum opened).

 

You park in the lot of a church that's now a daycare center - make sure you stop in behind the church for the skyline view:

 

 

...then you walk through the paved path through the woods, over the what used to be Fern Storer's house (she was the food critic for the Cincinnati Post for years).

 

 

In front of the house, which is now a museum, there are earthworks currently being excavated.  They've found a dry well, the powder magazine, and the half-circle stone wall that the cannons were placed behind.  The works are slowly being excavated by Jeannine Kreinbrink, an Archaeology professor from NKU.  They occasionally hold public dig days, where you can help dig out the earthworks, learning about history and archaeology at the same time!

 

Anyway, dad and I checked out the earthworks, and the surrounding view:

 

 

 

Then we were talking about the cannon before going into the museum, when one of the volunteers came out and started talking with us.  He was amazingly helpful...he took us over to the earthworks again and explained what they'd learned, the history of the site, of the Battery, the context of the war, etc.  Then we went into the museum, and he walked us through each room, explaining everything, answering questions, just doing a fantastic job.

 

The museum is fairly small, but it's got interpretive panels, and a number of artifacts from local Civil War history.  Some of the items aren't local, and some aren't authentic, but it's only been open a year, so I'm sure that will change over time.

 

The plan is to excavate the site scientifically, and then to restore it to how it would have looked in September of 1862.  I can't wait to see it!  It's really a tremendous asset, and I highly recommend blowing an hour or two of a Saturday morning by stopping by.

 

bump!