Site of Camp Burnside 1862
Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa
Marker Inscription
A rendezvous for valiant volunteers from Iowa to the Union Army in the Civil War, 1861 – 1865 23rd Inf. — 39th Inf.
The Story
This marker records the site of Camp Burnside, a Civil War rendezvous where Iowa volunteers mustered before joining the Union Army between 1861 and 1865, including men of the 23rd and 39th Infantry regiments. Training camps like this ringed the North, gathering farm boys and townsmen into regiments bound for the front. From this Des Moines ground, Iowa sent its soldiers into the war.
Why it matters
It marks one of the local mustering grounds that transformed ordinary Midwestern volunteers into the armies that preserved the Union.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the young states of the upper Midwest answered the Union's call in remarkable numbers. Iowa had only been a state since the 1840s, yet it sent an enormous share of its men into the armies, drawing them from farms, small towns, and river settlements across the prairie. Des Moines, near the center of the state, was a natural gathering point.
Before a regiment could march south it had to be assembled, organized, equipped, and drilled. That work happened at rendezvous and training camps, hastily laid out on open ground near towns with rail or river access. These camps ringed the North during the war years, turning civilians into soldiers before sending them to distant fronts.
This marker records the site of one such camp near Des Moines, where Iowa volunteers gathered between 1861 and 1865. It is the kind of place easy to overlook today, but in wartime it was a threshold, the last stretch of home ground that thousands of men crossed on their way to the war.
People & events
The inscription honors valiant volunteers who came here to join the Union Army, and it names two Iowa regiments in particular, the 23rd Infantry and the 39th Infantry. Naming specific regiments matters, because a Civil War regiment was more than a military unit. It was often raised from a handful of neighboring counties, so the men in its ranks were frequently neighbors, cousins, and schoolmates who enlisted together and served side by side.
At a camp like this, that community bond took shape. Recruits learned to form ranks, to answer to bugle calls, and to live under military discipline, all while still within reach of the state that had raised them. For many it was the first time they had left home, and the camp was where farm boys and townsmen began to become soldiers.
From here those regiments went where the Union sent them, into the campaigns that ground on for four long years. The marker does not recount their battles, and it need not. Its purpose is to fix in place the point of departure, the ground from which Iowa's soldiers stepped off toward the war.
Its place in the American story
The Union was preserved not only by generals and famous battlefields but by the vast machinery that raised and readied its armies. Camps like this one were the essential first link in that chain, converting a flood of eager volunteers into organized regiments capable of campaigning. Multiply this single site across the North and you begin to see how a nation mobilized for its greatest crisis.
Iowa's contribution is a striking example of that mobilization. A sparsely settled young state poured a huge portion of its men into the war effort, and grounds like this were where that commitment became visible and real. The prairie states helped supply the manpower that ultimately decided the conflict.
Remembering a mustering ground rather than a battlefield tells a quieter but vital part of the American story: that the war was won partly in ordinary places near ordinary towns, where communities gave up their sons to a cause larger than themselves.
If you visit
Stand here and picture open ground filled with tents, drilling recruits, and the noise of a camp coming to life, because that is what this quiet Des Moines site once was. Little of that scene survives, which makes the marker itself the main thing to read and reflect on.
Look for the regimental names on the inscription and let them anchor your imagination. Behind those numbers were real companies of Iowa men, many of them enlisting alongside people they had known their whole lives. This was the last familiar place many of them saw before heading south.
If you are touring Iowa's Civil War heritage, this makes a thoughtful stop precisely because it is understated. It asks you to honor not a moment of combat but a moment of departure, the everyday courage of ordinary volunteers leaving home for an uncertain war.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Civil War (1861–1865)
Themes & tags
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