Visiting the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum in Los Angeles

Physically, there’s not much left of the Civil War to see in Southern California. One exception is a building leftover from what was Camp Drum, later know as the Drum Barracks.

The junior officer's quarters is all that remains of Camp Drum, what used to be a 60-acre Union Army camp containing 18 military structures not far from the harbor at Los Angeles. LFP photo

The junior officer’s quarters is all that remains of Camp Drum, what used to be a 60-acre Union Army camp containing 18 military structures not far from the harbor at Los Angeles. LFP photo

A few years ago I took a day and went to visit the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum near Los Angeles. It is one of only two remaining structures of a Union Army camp that included 18 buildings on a 60-acre site in Wilmington, not far from Los Angeles’ harbor in San Pedro. (The other structure is the camp’s powder magazine, located on private property a few blocks from the Drum Barracks, but is not available to the public for viewing.) In addition to Camp Drum, there was a large quartermaster’s warehouse located on 37 acres near the harbor. That warehouse is long gone, too.

The Drum Barracks is operated by the City of Los Angeles’ Parks and Recreation Department and is one of the finest Civil War museums in the West. The museum is housed in what was the old junior officers quarters, a two-story wooden structure that actually was two housing units separated by an interior hallway and a very long stairway.

The Drum Barracks Museum is divided into several rooms, including a parlor, an armory, a bedroom, a revolving display room, a model room and a library. Each room is packed with Civil War artifacts, photos, paintings, books, documents and furniture representative of the time.

The museum’s director, Susan Ogle, has done a very credible job bringing the museum’s collection up to first-class ranking.

“It’s amazing how much we have here,” Ogle told me as she guided us through the rooms and displays. “A lot of very unique things just come to us, gifts from people or their estates that we never knew about.”

One such treasure is the Dunbar Autograph Book, a gift from the estate of Edwin Dunbar, Jr. It is a leather-bound autograph book that contains signatures gathered by Dunbar’s great-grandfather, Captain G. Edwin Dunbar, between 1862 to 1916.

This remarkable piece of American history contains signatures from 50 Union generals, including Sherman, Hooker, Burnside, Meade, Custer and Sheridan; Presidents William Howard Taft, Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes; Admiral George Dewey; Confederate General J.B. Gordon, and celebrities such as Buffalo Bill Cody, William Jennings Bryan, actor Edwin Booth (brother of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth) and Helen Keller.

The contents of the book have been digitized and visitors to the museum can go to a computer where they can page through the autographs, bits of history, (such as a fragment of a star shot from the flag of the 13th Michigan Volunteer Infantry), and important background information.

“There is nothing else like it,” Ogle said, “and it just simply came to us. That’s the way we get many things, from donors who want their family’s Civil War artifacts to be safe with us.”

The bedroom at the Drum Barracks offers a glimpse of what living quarters were like for high-ranking officers during the Civil War. The bed is made of dark walnut and stands nine feet tall. LFP photo

The bedroom at the Drum Barracks offers a glimpse of what living quarters were like for high-ranking officers during the Civil War. The bed is made of dark walnut and stands nine feet tall. LFP photo

It’s remarkable that the Drum Barracks is even still here. The building was due to be torn down in the early 1960s, but community groups successfully saved it. It was renovated and opened to the public in 1987 as a museum. The State of California owns the property, and the City of Los Angeles manages it and the museum.

The Drum Barracks Museum is located in a residential neighborhood, part of Los Angeles called Wilmington. If you’re not familiar with the Wilmington/San Pedro harbor area, you’ll need a map. You’ll drive along a few residential streets, then all of a sudden, there it is.

“We have great neighbors who understand what we have here, a part of Los Angeles’ heritage, and they support us,” Ogle said.

Even with the ghosts?

“Well, we’ve been told by some of our neighbors that at night sometimes they’ve heard horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels,” she said. “And I’ve even heard a few things while I’ve been inside the building.”

The Drum Barracks is real, however, something you can touch and feel that was a physical part of the American Civil War. Walk into a room, turn around a corner, and suddenly it’s the 1860s.

To paraphrase the director, there’s nothing else like it in Los Angeles.

The Drum Barracks Civil War Museum is located at 1052 Banning Blvd. inWilmington, California 90717. Visit the museum’s Website at www.drumbarracks.org for driving directions for more information.