The Wilderness is a forested region of Spotsylvania County, Virginia. During the 1700s, intensive tobacco cultivation resulted in the depletion of the local land, which was nicknamed the "Poison Fields". Over the next 140 years, the forested region's timber was cut to build plank roads or to fuel the two iron furnaces and several gold mines in the region. By the American Civil War, the region had become known as "the Wilderness", a 70-square-mile region of second-growth forest with a handful of isolated farms, a tangled network of wooded roads, and choking brush and trees. The Wilderness was the site of the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, and the 1864 Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.