battle of chickamauga tour

• Skip to global NPS navigation
• Skip to this park navigation
• Skip to the main content
• Skip to this park information section
• Skip to the footer section

Exiting nps.gov

Alerts in effect, 161st anniversary of the battle of chickamauga ranger-guided tours.

Last updated: August 13, 2024

Park footer

Contact info, mailing address:.

3370 LaFayette Road Fort Oglethorpe, GA 30742

706-866-9241

Stay Connected

Chickamauga Virtual Tour

Explore Chickamauga in our 360° Virtual Tour!

The Chickamauga National Battlefield is one of the best preserved Civil War battlefields and a must-see for any Civil War enthusiast. Use the arrows at the bottom of the tour to navigate between scenes and click the tour points to learn more about the battlefield.

View this tour in full screen or in VR with a headset.

Featured Resources

Fort Donelson Virtual Tour

Shiloh Virtual Tour

Raymond Virtual Tour

Resaca Virtual Tour

Kennesaw Mountain Virtual Tour

Chattanooga Virtual Tour

Pea Ridge Virtual Tour

Stones River Virtual Tour

10 Facts: The Battle of Chickamauga

Chickamauga Animated Map

Chickamauga

Chickamauga: Georgia's River of Death

Related battles.

Visit Chickamauga

Chickamauga Battlefield Tours

Privately guided battlefield tours for individuals and groups of any size. 

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is the first and largest battlefield park in the country. Half-day tours are a combination of driving and short walks that cover the whole battle. A full-day tour will cover the entire battle, but there is additional time to cover many more sites and add much more detail. In addition, longer walks to seldom seen but important battle sites are possible on a full-day tour. Typically, a half-day tour will be from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., or from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., but the times are flexible depending on your schedule and my availability. Full-day tours usually run from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (with a lunch break). Again, the times are flexible depending on your needs and schedule.

The tours will be individually structured to meet your needs. I have done tours for individuals, couples, families, Civil War Round Table groups, Band of Brothers Bus Tours, and everything in between. Some visitors want a full battle tour, some want to go into detail and focus on one particular aspect of the battle (such as the Breakthrough or the defense of Snodgrass Hill, etc.), and some want to concentrate on a particular unit that their great-great grandfather fought with. I can easily form your tour to meet your needs. Tours are usually a combination of driving and short walks. Also, hiking tours for any part of the battlefield can be scheduled as well.

Chickamauga Battlefield

Half Day Tour

Full Day Tour

Chattanooga Battlefield

Chickamauga and Chattanooga Battlefields combined

Full Day Tour Only

Chickamauga and/or Chattanooga Two-Day Tour—For Civil War Round Tables or Study Groups who want to immerse themselves in detailed study.

Two Full Days

Longstreet’s Breakthrough at Chickamauga Walking Tour (3 miles)

The Fight for Snodgrass Hill Walking Tour (2.2 miles—some moderate hills)

I do tours in all seasons, with spring, summer, and fall naturally being the heaviest seasons. Don’t discount winter, though. It might be cold at times, but the advantage is that with the leaves off the trees it is easier to see the terrain.

Tours go on rain or shine.

12 hours notice is needed for all tours. Schedule as early as possible.

NOTE: I do not do one or two-hour tours of the battlefield. The battlefield is too large to do an adequate job for a private tour in that short amount of time.

For costs of tour and scheduling, please contact Robert Carter by phone or email.

Remember, 12-hours notice is needed for your tour.

Other Tours Offered

From Dalton to Resaca 1864 (full-day only)

Resaca Battlefield Historic Site—the largest battle of the Atlanta Campaign

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield

Andrews Raid—The Great Locomotive Chase (full-day only)

• About the Guide
• Maps & Locations

Battlefield Tours

Your user agent does not support the html5 audio element., general information.

For almost twenty years, I have been conducting tours of Civil War battlefields in the Chattanooga area. I offer private comprehensive tours that interpret the battle from the grand strategic view to what the soldiers saw on the battlefield.

Many young men joined the army to escape the boring back-breaking labor of farm life or from the monotonous, often dangerous, experience of a city job. What was it like, then, for these everyday Americans to find themselves in the tumult, horror and carnage of a battlefield? What was it like to be in the Chickamauga forest, neither side knowing the location of the other, groping through the dark foreboding woods to find each other? "March to the sound of the guns and be governed by circumstances," were the orders. What was it like to hear volly after volly of musket fire ripping through the trees, to experience the air bursts of exploding artillery shells and to smell the sulfur smoke from innumerable destructive blasts?

At the end, 34,000 soldiers - Americans all, were killed, wounded or missing. Brigades were broken, regiments shattered and companies obliterated. In one company of the 48th Tennessee infantry, thirty-three of forty-four soldiers were shot down in a matter of minutes. Company H of the 100th Illinois took twenty-two soldiers in the battle and lost eleven of them in the opening minutes of their fight in Viniard field. In just a few minutes, some community in Tennessee and Illinois didn't have any young men anymore. Heartbreaking losses like these were commonplace at Chickamauga, the rule, not the exception. The battle cost both armies close to thirty percent of their operational strength. The official death total was 4,200. In the days, weeks, months, even years after the battle that figure may be as high as 10,000 dead as a result of Chickamauga.

Ohio monument at Craven's house Lookout Mountain, Tennessee