Chickamauga Battlefield Fun
Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park, 3370 LaFayette Rd., Fort Oglethorpe, GA 30742.
Every U.S. Civil War battlefield that you visit will evoke different feelings. Gettysburg summons stories about Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Antietam stirs thoughts about the common soldier fighting in a cornfield near a remote country church. And then there’s Chickamauga. This heavily wooded, blue-green battlefield nestled along Chickamauga Creek, Georgia, is hauntingly beautiful and geographically disorienting. The site calls up images of a defeated Federal army desperately fighting to hold a hill.
~ Bicycling Chickamauga Battlefield, p. vi.
What’s the “fun” in U.S. Civil War history? If you are reading this page, you have your own answer. Mine is that it is fun to hop on a bicycle and explore a beautiful landscape that is rich in history. On bikes, we take charge of learning what we want to learn, in the way that we want to learn it. Chickamauga’s natural and physical amenities offer many lessons about both soldiers and farming families. And those lessons are easily learned on a bike, when you can feel the land and also appreciate the distance and visibility between points of historical interest.
Chickamauga’s park roads wind through mature trees and grassy fields that cover about 5,500 acres of park land. The roads are mostly flat, although the steep but short climb up Horseshoe Ridge (Snodgrass Hill) is an exception. Road shoulders are rare, but car traffic tends to move slowly on all but LaFayette Road. (We avoid much of that road). And finally, Chickamauga’s rural character offers an educational advantage to bicyclists. That’s because the tangled roads and low-visibility woodlots help us to appreciate the confusion that both armies reported during the battle.
Join the ranks of people who like to learn like a kid on a bike. Read this blog post about bicycling Chickamauga.
Chickamauga Battlefield Bike Tour — Guidebook
Civil War Cycling’s guidebooks and maps help you to plan your own self-directed, educational bicycling adventure.
Our Chickamauga products take you beyond the official National Park Service auto tour for a mostly chronological retelling of the story of the Battle of Chickamauga. In fact, this 12.6-mile tour covers the eastern half of the park, something that the NPS auto tour neglects (probably because monuments in this part of the park are farther from the road).
The Chickamauga battlefield park has twenty-two miles of paved roads (with about seventy pull-offs) and five miles of gravel or earthen roads. Using Civil War Cycling’s maps and cues, you can bicycle the park safely while avoiding most of LaFayette Road, a north-south commercial road that bisects the park.
View Guidebook on Amazon (paid link).
– 238 full-color pages (paperback)
– Guidebook for a 12.6-mile looped ride
– Covers the Battle of Chickamauga (1863)
– 18 maps, 77 photos, GPS points
– Detailed bike cues, road descriptions
– Gear and touring tips
– Historical summaries with endnotes
– Focus on geography and monuments
– Glossary, bibliography, notes, index
Perfect Bound | 6″ x 9″ | December 14, 2021
Chickamauga Battlefield Bike Tour — Route 1 Map (12.6 miles)
View Route 1 Companion Map Description
– PDF document download
– 12.6 miles, Half Day Loop
– Learn about the Battle of Chickamauga
– 3-4 hour self-directed tour
– 38 full-color pages (maps, photos)
– Detailed bicycle cues, road descriptions
– View or print PDF for personal use
– (Not part of a GPS system)
Route 1 Overview Map
All Civil War Cycling products provide several maps for each route, plus navigational cues in text format. Here is the overview map for a 12.6-mile ride through the Chickamauga battlefield:
Example Military Map
Civil War Cycling guidebooks and digital maps include high-level military maps that describe the battle. Their purpose is to help cyclists learn the basic battle narrative while connecting our bodies to the land itself. Put differently, simple military maps help us to connect what we see and feel now to what happened here in September 1863.
Questions? Need Help?
Civil War Cycling is something that I do, because I love it. I am happy to respond to your questions (or hear your stories) via email. You will find details on the Contact Us page.