The American Battlefield Trust, a charity dedicated to preserving the lands where the Civil War was fought, has partnered with a group of Minecraft builders to recreate the battle of Vicksburg in-game.
The battle of Vicksburg build took a team of 30 builders a full year to complete, and it features not just Vicksburg itself, but a giant section of the countryside around the city, including the trenches where the battle was fought. The map features 3,000 voice-acted NPCs, including Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain.
You can take a look at the full map and additional screenshots over on the official site, but it's incredibly impressive. The city itself is made up of scale models of the real buildings that would've been standing in Vicksburg back in 1863.
The American Battlefield Trust plans to make the map the centerpiece of a weeklong event starting November 11, which will see a selection of streamers leading their viewers through the digital historical site. In addition to all the historical recreations, the map also features a selection of minigames, including races and canon-shooting challenges.
Whether or not players actually treat Minecraft Vicksburg with any of the reverence a historical site might deserve remains to be seen, but a trailer for the event does acknowledge a "small dose of chicanery" in the proceedings.
The charity notes that heavy rain and mudslides in 2020 at the Vicksburg National Military Park opened massive sinkholes and washed away whole hillsides of the Vicksburg National Cemetery, leaving large sections of the park inaccessible to the public. This event is part of a drive to help restore the park and reopen public access.
Maybe you can also find Vicksburg somewhere in the Minecraft build of the entire universe.
