Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I learned about the Civil War through books, movies, and plastic action figures. There just weren’t any battlefields in Oregon for a ten-year-old to experience first-hand. So, when I started traveling east, I was drawn to iconic battlefields like Gettysburg and Antietam. Until I started my quest to visit all the national park units, I had no idea of the sheer number of battlefields or how integrated into local communities they were and still are.