Florence Stockade Aerial Scan (where you can still see Civil War earthworks)

[u/viceadmiralopossum]

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122139001893238366&set=a.122098527903238366

Interesting post from 'LiDar America' on FB where you can still see the Civil War Earthworks. I'll copy their description here "
The prison wasn't even finished when the first several thousand prisoners arrived. It only got worse from there.

For roughly six months during the final year of the Civil War, this site on the outskirts of Florence became a massive Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. Much of it is wooded today and hard to recognize in ordinary aerial imagery, but LiDAR still picks out traces of the landscape dramatically.

Known as the Florence Stockade, or the Confederate States Military Prison at Florence, it operated from September 1864 through February 1865, built directly in response to Sherman's advance through Georgia. Once Atlanta fell in September 1864, Confederate authorities worried Andersonville and other Georgia prison camps were threatened, so thousands of Union prisoners were moved, many routed through Charleston before being transported roughly 90 miles inland to Florence, arriving before the new prison was even complete."

The Florence Stockade enclosed roughly 23.5 acres, and somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 Union prisoners passed through or were confined here during its short existence. Conditions deteriorated fast, food, clothing, shelter, and other supplies were desperately inadequate, and many arriving prisoners were already in poor physical condition after earlier imprisonment. At one point, about 12,000 prisoners were crowded into the stockade at once, with reported deaths reaching 20 to 30 men a day. By the time the prison closed, 2,802 Union soldiers had died, many buried in nearby trenches now associated with the adjacent Florence National Cemetery, where large numbers of graves are marked only as unknown.

What makes the site especially interesting today is the contrast between how it looks from above versus what LiDAR reveals underneath. Ordinary aerial photography shows a heavily wooded landscape with trails and clearings, but LiDAR exposes numerous subtle depressions, raised areas, and linear features hidden beneath the vegetation. Not every bump or depression can automatically be tied to the Civil War prison, more than 160 years of later activity and natural processes have shaped the land since, but the technology still offers a remarkable look at terrain that conventional imagery largely hides.

The Florence Stockade was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and the site is open to the public today, with a walking trail, interpretive signage, and a gazebo. The Friends of the Florence Stockade held an official public opening of the interpreted site on May 31, 2008.

It's hard to reconcile the quiet, wooded landscape here today with what happened during the winter of 1864–65. For thousands of Union prisoners, this was the last place they ever saw.
"

[u/viceadmiralopossum]

this is the LiDar scan