The Archaeological Imprint and Significance of Camp Douglas (11CK1235): A Civil War–Era Training and POW Facility Located in Chicago, Illinois

Abstract

Abstract Camp Douglas existed from September 1861 through early 1866, when the military decommissioned it. During this time, the camp grew to encompass 60 acres located on the southern outskirts of Chicago where it served as a recruitment and training center and, later, beginning in February 1862, a Confederate POW facility. Before the end of 1865, the federal government began auctioning off camp structures and materials, and thereafter, the camp began to fade from physical view, while Northern interests actively sought to expunge Camp Douglas, as well as other federal POW camps, from popular memory. The erasure of the camp was all but complete by the early twentieth-first century, when a group of individuals formed the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, Inc., in order to tell the story of the camp and determine if subsurface remains of the site existed. Since 2012, the foundation has sponsored 11 archaeological investigations of the camp. These excavations, which relied on volunteers drawn from the public, exposed camp deposits, raised public awareness about the site, and highlighted the site's connection to twentieth-century events, while demonstrating that developed urban areas may harbor significant archaeological remains. The results of the archaeological research reaffirm that Camp Douglas is a significant Chicago site whose story is worth investigating and telling.