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CRAWFORD, Texas - Today, down the road from President Bush's ranch, the white party tent where antiwar activists gathered for daily rallies and television interviews will be dismantled.
More than 200 crosses and U.S. flags that bear the names of fallen soldiers will be uprooted.
The caterers who prepared organic sandwiches and salads for hundreds of people each day will return home.
Twenty-five days ago, when Cindy Sheehan arrived, this was barren land, an acre of brush and scrub. The 48-year-old from Vacaville, Calif., didn't have as much as a tent or a flashlight. Just a question.
She had to ask it. For Casey, her 24-year-old son, the Army specialist who was killed in an attack last April in Sadr City. What she wanted to ask President Bush was this: "For what noble cause did my son die?"
It was a simple, yet profound question, even to those without sons or daughters in the war. As she waited for President Bush to sit down with her, her profile grew. She became a fixture on the nightly news, on cable talk shows. Thousands descended on a rural town in central Texas that doesn't even boast a thousand residents.
In less than a month, her single chair under an umbrella became a milelong encampment, so big it had its own name - Camp Casey. And it became the platform for a fierce national debate.
"If this lady is going to sleep in a ditch in 100-degree weather and demand to be heard and demand to have an explanation as to why her son died for this cause, she needs support," said Rik Flynn, 59, a schoolteacher from Stone Ridge, N.Y., who spent nearly two weeks in Crawford.
Sheehan drew other mothers of soldiers and they didn't all agree with her.
"She's the leader of a movement that could be a threat," said Susan Gertson, 51, of Eagle Lake, Texas. Gertson's son was killed in Mozul in February.
Sheehan is leaving Crawford today. How did a woman, known only through television news shows, captivate so many people, proponents and opponents alike, that they would temporarily abandon their jobs, their families and join - or counter - her peace demonstration?
"The movement was already there," Sheehan said. "The people were already there. It just took me to spark a movement and give Americans a voice."
The idea to go to Crawford came Aug. 3.
Fourteen Marines had been killed. Sheehan didn't care for President Bush's explanation. Their deaths weren't "for a noble cause."
After she attended a Veterans for Peace conference in Dallas she could have gone home. "I'm driving down to Crawford," she said.
Word spread quickly.
A few days later, she had 10 15-passenger vans shuttling supporters to and from Camp Casey, a public relations team, a kitchen staff and visits from actor Martin Sheen and former Democratic presidential candidate the Rev. Al Sharpton.
"This woman, her son died," Charlotte Roybal, 56, of Santa Fe, N.M., said. "That's so real. That's personal. As women across America, we all relate to her."
But why Sheehan, specifically? She was not the first grieving parent to speak out against the war.
Was it just a question of a captive White House press corps with little else to report during the President's monthlong vacation? Or did she somehow shift the country's attitude toward the war?
Dallas minister Peter Johnson, who was making his fourth trip to Camp Casey last Friday, said the answer isn't as complex as it seems. He said Sheehan is to the antiwar movement what Rosa Parks was to the civil rights movement.
"Who would have thought that a seamstress who sat close to white people in Montgomery, Ala., would become a world-famous icon," he asked.
"This is an idea whose time has come."
Deborah Johns was incensed.
"I was sick and tired of listening to Cindy Sheehan do nothing but demoralize our men and women in the papers," said Johns, head of the Northern California Marine Moms.
As a mother of a U.S. Marine twice deployed to Iraq, Johns felt she had to respond.
About three weeks ago, she contacted Move America Forward, a group that was instrumental in the 2003 recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Johns and several of the group's leaders decided "let's go across the country and talk to people and spark the hearts of the American people who are tired of listening to this kind of negative rhetoric."
They called it the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour. The first stop was Sheehan's hometown. The last was Crawford. They arrived Saturday.
Around Crawford, there were red, white and blue "This is Bush country," "IM4W" and "Support our troops" signs. Pro-Bush and pro-troops camps dotted the town. Valerie Duty, an acquaintance of President Bush, started Camp Reality, across from the ditch where Sheehan spent her first night in Crawford.
"We also have a right to speak our mind," said Duty, 46, of Crawford, Texas. "There was a silent majority that wasn't speaking."
In downtown, Gary Qualls set up Fort Qualls, a row of trailers and booths with displays of fallen U.S. soldiers, his son, Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, among them. He was killed Nov. 16. Qualls confiscated a cross Aug. 18 with his son's name that was placed near Camp Casey without his permission. He supports the war.
"That's my son," said Qualls, 48, of Temple, Texas. "That's my family. They never even asked me. If they were honoring something, they would have asked."
That's how fractious this debate became in the final days of Sheehan's vigil - parents of slain soldiers attacking each other from simultaneous rallies on opposite sides of town.
"I sympathize with the fact that she lost her son," Johns said. "That is tragic in and of itself. However, I do not feel that she is honoring her son. I have talked to numerous men and women. They want to be there. They want to finish the job."
But as the death toll in Iraq nears 2,000, and support for the war drops below 50 percent, people seem less and less sure of what finishing the job means.
Bush never met with Sheehan in Crawford and that's perfectly fine with her.
"I look back on it, and I am very, very, very grateful he did not meet with me, because we have sparked and galvanized the peace movement," Sheehan told the Associated Press. "If he'd met with me, then I would have gone home, and it would have ended there."
But it's not going to end there.
Last week, Sheehan announced plans for a cross country tour that will begin Thursday and end in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 21. It's called the "Bring Them Home Now Tour," and it makes a stop in Tallahassee on Sept. 6.
She will be accompanied by Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against War, all groups that rallied around her in Crawford.
But Duty, President Bush's acquaintance, said Sheehan's "15-minutes of fame" is up.
"While she's out here in the country, she's a star," she said. "But in D.C., there will be thousands of stars. She will blend in with the crowd."
Last Saturday, the crowds gathered for one of the final events under the white party tent, an interfaith service. Hundreds of people sang religious hymns and prayed for peace. The Rev. Sharpton, dressed in a black dress shirt and slacks, approached the podium. Camera lights flickered. People circled around him.
His voice boomed, as if he were preaching a church sermon.
"These families have lost their loved ones on information that was false and flawed," he said. "Let's not scapegoat these families. Cindy wasn't the one who said there were weapons of mass destruction over there. She wasn't the one who said mission was accomplished. Quit digging up Cindy's quotes. Dig up the ones that made the false quotes that led us here in the first place."
The crowd applauded. They whooped and hollered.
"Cindy could not stop this if she wanted to now," said Johnson, the Dallas minister.