Roanoke Front

The Roanoke Front was the largest and most important--and most dangerous--front of the Great War in North America. Worldwide, only the Western Front in Europe saw more or fiercer fighting.

The Roanoke Front was opened in 1914 when the United States Army invaded western Virginia over the Catawba Mountains. The Confederate Army stopped the assault at Big Lick, Virginia in 1915, and the Roanoke Front remained stationary for several years. The front was among the first theaters in North America where either the US or CS armies used poison gas and barrels.

The breakthrough came in 1917 when the US pushed the now badly outnumbered Confederates east and rendezvoused with the US Army which had repelled the Army of Northern Virginia from Pennsylvania. The two armies pushed the Confederates back to the Rappahannock River, which would become the new US-CS border after the war.