Leave Nothing Useful Behind

In 1862, a Union warehouse at Cumberland Gap was destroyed after supplies and ammunition were left behind with orders to burn them, creating the long crater that remains there. As advancing Confederates approached, scattered munitions continued to explode unexpectedly for 18 hours, delaying them long enough for the once-surrounded Union garrison of Cumberland Gap to escape capture by retreating northward into the Kentucky wilderness. On September 17, 1862, Lieutenant Colonel George Gallup of the 14th Kentucky Volunteer Regiment, United States Army, recalled that the explosion shook the mountains, filled the air with dense smoke, hurled rocks, cartridge boxes, barrels of powder, and other materials high into the air, and sent debris falling as far as a mile from the exploding magazine, after which the burning roof of a 180-feet-long storehouse fell in and ignited the cannon shells stored there.

Kentucky · United States