The
Fort Collier Civil War Center, Inc. is a non-profit
organization dedicated to the preservation of the
earthworks at Fort Collier Civil War site in Winchester,
Virginia.
In
the 1997 Winchester-Frederick County Battlefield Network
Plan, Fort Collier is listed as one of three Civil
War sites in the Winchester-Frederick County area
that are in critical need of preservation. The Fort
Collier Civil War Center, a non-profit organization
with a membership of over 200 donors and an active
Board of Directors, was formed as a result of the
immediate threats to the Fort Collier site by encroaching
industrial development. The FCCWC purchased the 10-acre
Fort Collier tract on April 1, 2002. Purchase was
made possible through private donations totaling approximately
$295,000 and approximately $176,000 in grants.
The
need to preserve this site in particular can be appreciated
not merely in reference to the Third Battle of Winchester
or the larger campaigns waged by both armies in the
Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, but also in the context
of the effects of the war upon a large civilian population
center. Fort Collier was constructed by Confederate
forces in 1861 as a deterrent to attackers of Winchester,
as the city had become the center of the Confederate
military leaders’ strategy to hold a front line
against Federal incursion into the state. Harpers
Ferry was considered indefensible – an opinion
borne out during the war. Winchester, then, became
a center of operations for the Confederacy, which
disputed its control with Federal forces so often
that the city changed hands over 70 times during the
course of the war. Fort Collier, although seeing action
only in the Third Battle of Winchester, stood imposingly
throughout the war as a deterrent to attackers and
a reminder to civilians of the position in which their
city had been placed by circumstances beyond their
control. Winchester was transformed for almost the
entire duration of the war to a city on the front
line – attacked and occupied by both armies
until the culminating Third Battle of Winchester,
when the city fell back under Union control for good.
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