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The Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation will conduct a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Valley Head Elementary School to discuss the Camp Elkwater National Register of Historic Places survey, documentation and nomination. Anyone interested in learning about the project and what it means to neighboring private landowners is encouraged to attend.

The Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation recently acquired remnants of Camp Elkwater, a Civil War site near Huttonsville. Thanks to efforts by the foundation, Beckwith Lumber Co. and the Civil War Preservation Trust, nearly 10 acres of the historic Union encampment have been preserved. The tract features an impressive earthwork that once held Union artillery.

In 2008, RMBF received an American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service grant which will enable the organization to survey the remnants of the earthworks and fortifications, and document the site for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

The consulting firm Mudpuppy & Waterdog was awarded the project.

Federal troops under Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds built Camp Elkwater during the summer of 1861. The site is located eight miles south of Huttonsville on U.S. 219 in Randolph County. Fortifications were dug across the narrow valley floor to block the Huttonsville-Huntersville Turnpike, a wagon road leading over the Alleghenies to the Virginia Central Railroad. Following the Union victory at Rich Mountain on July 11, 1861, Camp Elkwater was key to the defense of upper Tygart Valley. Nearly 3,000 federal soldiers were stationed there on Sept. 12, 1861, when Confederates, under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee, attacked.

Failing in an assault on Cheat Mountain, seven miles east, Lee hoped to seize Camp Elkwater.

"When morning broke, I could see the enemy's tents on Valley River, at the point of the Huttonsville road just below me," he wrote. "It was a tempting sight."

But the Tennessee troops under Lee's command were too exhausted from their rugged march to launch an assault. The armies skirmished instead.

During the action on Sept. 13, Lee's aide-de-camp John Augustine Washington of Mt. Vernon was killed while scouting at Elkwater. Lee's son "Rooney" dodged a similar fate. Gen. Lee himself narrowly escaped capture. Foiled in his first campaign, Lee left "western" Virginia with a tarnished reputation and the nickname "Granny Lee."

Federal troops held Camp Elkwater until the spring of 1862. Many notables served there, including future members of Congress, a Supreme Court justice and future President Rutherford B. Hayes. Regiments of U.S. (West) Virginia troops garrisoned the site as well.

Remains of the fortifications at Elkwater can still be seen. The newly protected tract includes a well-preserved earthen "redoubt" on a hilltop overlooking the old turnpike (now U.S. 219). Ohio troops named it "Fort Marrow" in honor of the colonel of the 3rd Ohio Infantry. Federal artillery was posted inside. Interpretation is planned at this little-known Civil War site.

For more information on the public meeting, call Chelley Depp, executive director of the RMBF, at 304-637-7424 or e-mail richmt@richmountain.org.