SPANISH FORT — Civil War re-enactors from Florida, Georgia and Alabama spent their Memorial weekend holiday honoring the soldiers who fought in the Blakeley battle, the last major engagement of that tragic conflict.

 Small in number but huge in dedication, they came to Blakeley State Park, set up their camps, dressed out in their wool uniforms and braved the heat to put on living history demonstrations for spectators Saturday and Sunday on the battlefield where Americans had fought in 1865.

 “We hope we made (Blakeley Park) and the men (re-enactors) proud,” said Walter Cook of Webster, Fla., who coordinated the living history event to honor the men “who did this for real in 1865.” The re-enactors portrayed the Confederate 46th Mississippi and the Union’s 83rd Ohio as they recreated the April 2, 1865 skirmish when federal troops overran a Confederate picket line set up in the Blakeley area during the runup to the final full-scale battle.

About 95 percent of the Memorial weekend warriors were participating at Blakeley for the first time, Cook said, and went away adding the Blakeley battlefield to their list of favorite sites.

 The re-enactors paid all their own expenses for the weekend and added a monetary donation to Blakeley Park to use in preserving the site. Cook’s organization, the Liberty Guard Mess, is a group of young men who specialize in depicting the military life of enlisted men during the Civil War. Also scouting Blakeley as a site for a future special event were leaders of the Augusta Jane Evans Auxiliary, a woman’s group that demonstrates Civil War era cooking.

 Dressed in period costume, the ladies and small children added to the historical impressions of the weekend. “Blakeley is indebted to these organizations that make such a contribution at their own expense to preserve the heritage of this area,” said Jo Ann Flirt, director of Blakeley Park.

 “They encourage us in our difficult mission of preserving this battlefield site and making it accessible daily not only to local visitors but to the descendants of the more than 35,000 men who fought here April 9, 1865 in a civil conflict so tragic that many Americans have great difficulty in talking about it even now,” she said.

 Weekend festivities at Blakeley Park included a sold out boat tour of the Tensaw-Mobile River Delta aboard the park’s Delta Explorer.