The Field of Lost Shoes in New Market, Virginia

At New Market, Virginia, on May 15, 1864, Confederate General John C. Breckinridge hastily assembled a scratch force to meet a Union advance down the Shenandoah Valley, and among them were 257 cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, some just fifteen years old. After Confederate artillery stalled at Jacob Bushong's farm, the cadets charged through a rain-soaked wheat field under heavy fire, many losing their shoes in the mud, before overrunning a Union cannon battery in hand-to-hand combat, Atlas Obscura recounts. Fifty-seven cadets were wounded and ten died of their wounds, and the field where they lost their footwear is remembered today as the Field of Lost Shoes.

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