Three Crater Photographs

Here are three photographs of the Crater from the Petersburg Museum that did not make it into my book. The first was taken inside the mineshaft itself and is dated 1926, though it is difficult to estimate exactly where.  Notice the sunlight that is coming in from above.  I assume the photograph was taken close to the entrance.  The second one shows a depression in the soil that follows the mineshaft up to the Crater itself, which is located by the cluster of trees just over the ridge line.  It doesn’t look much different from today.  It was taken sometime between 1926 and 1934. The final photograph, I believe, is from a point just west of the Crater looking northwest.  The tree line is much fuller today and extends all the way to the Jerusalem Plank Road.  It was taken in 1906.  I would love to find a photograph of the battlefield in the 1920s that showed the actual golf course.

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1 comment… add one
  • Tony Henchinski Apr 20, 2013 @ 15:56

    Awesome, this is the kind of stuff I like. To many battlefields had to be “re-created” from “modernization”. Looks as though it caved in by this time though. I wonder how much dough it would take to excavate and secure the shaft for visitor traffic. I’m sure the idea has been broached in the past. The first picture looks more like the remnants of the trench leading to the mine.

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