Fort Collier: The Earthwork That Anchored Winchester

When Confederate General Joseph Johnston occupied Winchester in the summer of eighteen sixty-one, his engineers began ringing the town with earthworks. Fort Collier, likely designed under General W. H. C. Whiting, was built along the Martinsburg Turnpike approach, surrounding the farmhouse of Benjamin Stine to command the northern road into town.

For three years the fort sat largely quiet. Then, on September nineteenth, eighteen sixty-four, it became the pivot point of the Third Battle of Winchester. A massive Union cavalry charge overran the Confederate line anchored here, breaking General Jubal Early's line and sending his army in retreat up the Valley. That charge effectively ended Confederate control of the Shenandoah for the rest of the war. The ten-acre earthwork site was purchased by a preservation group in two thousand two and is now open to the public as the Fort Collier Civil War Center.