Andersonville National Historic Site

Stop number two on our weekend road trip was Andersonville National Historic Site. Andersonville served as the site for the notorious Confederate prison Camp Sumter towards the end of the Civil War. The prison held around 45,000 men, while over 13,000 of them died.

Address and Location

You’ll find Andersonville National Historic Site at 760 POW Road in Andersonville, Georgia. It is a ways off the interstate in southwest Georgia, so you should plan to stop here if you are interested in visiting.

A replica of a Civil War prison stockade

Cost

Exploring the museum and the park are free.

What to do

Andersonville also houses the National Prisoner of War Museum in the Visitors’ Center. The museum is a powerful testimony to the sufferings of Americans held as prisoners of war throughout our history. The majority of the exhibits are from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam and feature first-hand accounts of POWs. It honestly reminded me a lot of the Holocaust Museum in terms of the highly personal stories of suffering and survival. I also chose to not take photographs of any of those exhibits.

The prison site sits behind the main building. Only a reconstructed section of the stockade and a few tents give you an idea of how the prisoners lived. A path traces the full footprint of the prison yard. A handful of monuments sit by the prison site while the rest are located in the cemetery. I would recommend wearing closed-toe shoes if you want to walk around Andersonville. Most of the property is grass, and sandals weren’t the best choice.

A monument to Massachusetts soldiers who died at Andersonville

Currently (September, 2018), the access road to the cemetery is closed, so you have to walk to the cemetery. We wanted to make the final stop on our trip before it closed, so we passed on the cemetery.