Site of Camp Burnside

In the fall of eighteen sixty-two, this ground in Des Moines became a gathering point for Iowa volunteers heading off to the Civil War. Camp Burnside was a rendezvous post where young men from the surrounding counties mustered into the Union Army. The first company reported here that September, and the Twenty-Third Iowa Infantry was organized at this camp.

The Thirty-Ninth Iowa Infantry assembled here as well. The camp was short-lived. Later that October, Governor Kirkwood ordered the regimental rendezvous moved to Camp Herron near Davenport.

The soldiers who left from here would go on to fight across Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. A marker remembers this quiet spot where Iowa farm boys first became soldiers.