Before 2021, I had heard of the Cedar Creek Battlefield reenactment. I had seen the signs around town. I just didn’t know there was going to be cannon fire.
We had been in the house for about two weeks when, without warning, I heard a very loud boom. Then another. And a few more after that.
That sounds like artillery, I thought, while trying to figure out what in the heck was going on.
As it turns out, artillery was a pretty good guess.
Every October, the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation hosts a large-scale reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek on the original battlefield in Middletown, Virginia. The tradition has been going for more than 30 years, bringing thousands of reenactors and spectators to town for a weekend of battle reenactments, living-history camps, demonstrations, and remembrance.
I knew the reenactment was coming. I just hadn’t realized the weekend came with cannon fire.
Once you know what is happening, the whole town feels different. Uniformed soldiers appear along familiar roads. Camps rise in the fields. Horses, period clothing, canvas tents, and the smoke and thunder of the reenactment briefly transform the landscape. It is one thing to read that a battle happened here. It is another to hear its echo roll across the valley.
Let’s shoot the reenactors
In 2025, the Wayside Inn reached out with an interesting project idea: “Let’s shoot the reenactors—but make the photographs look old.”
How could I say no to that?
The Wayside Inn has been part of Middletown since 1797, and local lore holds that during the Civil War, the town changed hands so many times that opposing forces spared the inn because each expected to need it again on the next advance. It is exactly the kind of story that clings to a place like this, where documented history and the stories people pass down have lived together for generations.
That became the spirit of the shoot: not an attempt to manufacture a forgotten historical record, but to imagine the moments that could have happened here.
The reenactors brought the details. The Wayside Inn brought the setting. I brought the camera. Together, we created scenes that feel as though they might have been pulled from another century—portraits poised somewhere between history, theater, and memory.
Did it happen?
It could have.
See the complete collection in the Cedar Creek 2025 gallery.