At Vicksburg, woven gabions were used to build trenches and protect soldiers. A new retaining wall there features a modern version to prevent further road washouts

Grant Circle retaining wall, detail of mesh and stone gabions (NPS); old ones at Battery Hickenlooper (Library of Congress)

A giant new retaining wall at Vicksburg National Military Park – part of a $7.4 million project to restore a tour road damaged by heavy rain in 2020 -- features a modern use of gabions, a common feature in fortifications at the Civil War battlefield.

While the 50-foot gabion basket at Grant Circle is made of heavy wire mesh and stone and is meant to improve road stability and drainage, those erected 160 years ago were open-ended and made of woven baskets filled with whatever material soldiers could muster. They were built to protect men.

The National Park Service found the comparison worthy of note in its recent announcement the project at Grant Circle and North Union Avenue had been completed.

Gabions bookend recreated section of Fort Garrott (Vicksburg National Military Park)

“During the (1863) siege, both armies used gabion baskets woven with cane reeds and filled with earth and stone to strengthen trenches and ramparts. While the materials have changed, the core engineering remains the same to reinforce an 1863 fortification or a present-day road,” the agency said.

A large portion of the Vicksburg project included the retaining wall, intended to improve road slope stability and allow water to pass through, reducing the risk of drainage pipe failures.

The historic gabions were a cylindrical basket, open at both ends. When filled with dirt, they could be used as a revetment to form parapets on trenches, according to the park. Both sides would have used gabions in the construction of their fortifications.

Trench line with gabions and tree trunks at Coonskin's Tower at Vicksburg

The Federal army used them to help construct trenches they dug across the Vicksburg landscape as part of the successful siege. Battery Hickenlooper was a prime example.

It was hot work.

In order to dig those trenches, soldiers would have to construct gabions and sap rollers, which were used to dig approach trenches and enabled troops to have cover as they advanced on the Confederate position, the park said in an old Facebook post about fortifications.

Troops turned to giant cane (Arundinaria gigantea), a fast-growing bamboo found across the Deep South. “It became a lifesaver during the Siege of Vicksburg. Soldiers used it to build fascines (bundled cane walls) and gabions (earth-filled baskets) to reinforce trenches and fortifications.” (At left, example of gabions at Fort Sedgwick (Fort Hell) at Petersburg, Va. Library of Congress)

A soldier with a Minnesota artillery battery wrote a June 1863 letter mentioning the features at Vicksburg:

“The embrasures, through which we fire, are made by setting up gabions on each side of the space left for the embrasure, where they are staked down and filled with earth. A gabion is made of stakes, with grapevines, young cane or flexible bushes woven through them, so as to form a hollow cylinder something like a large willow basket without the bottom, only much longer.

"The stakes are left projecting at one end some distance beyond the wicker work, and when the gabion is put in its place these projecting ends are driven into the ground and the gabion is filled with dirt. When we first came into the work the embrasures were not lined with gabions, and the consequence was that in one day's firing we blew out the embrasures so wide that a two horse wagon could have been driven through one of them.”

Before and after view of road section at Grant Circle (Vicksburg NMP)

The completion of the road project means the entire 16-mile tour road is now open to visitors for the first time since 2020, when heavy rainfall created a landslide.

Additional work at Grant Circle included milling and asphalt paving, new striping, curb and gutter replacements and installation of a new drainage system on the west side of the circle. 

Along North Union Avenue, work crews installed 900 aggregate piers under the new roadway as reinforcement to improve vertical load transfer and reduce the risk of lateral soil failure, the park said.

Before and after section of North Union Avenue (Vicksburg NMP)

The Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park helped advocate for the funding.

“The completed project includes improvements to drainage, erosion control, and ground stabilization to help keep these roads open for years to come,” the group said Monday. “This is a success our supporters can take pride in.”