At Timmy's Branch, the original Mill Springs Road crossed the creek near one of the few remaining stands of river cane in the area. During the approach to the Battle of Mill Springs, Confederate General George Crittenden, believing Union General George Thomas had fewer than 2,000 men at Logan's Crossroads, advanced with 4,500 troops from Beech Grove around midnight on January 18 to attack, unaware that Thomas had been reinforced and now commanded a force as large as his own and better armed. Captain Willis Scott Bledsoe's and Captain Quincy C. Sanders' cavalry led the eight-mile march, followed by General Felix Zollicoffer's brigade, as pitch darkness and heavy rain turned the road into a quagmire and slowed men and horses. Union pickets posted along Timmy's Branch, twenty men of Col. Frank Wolford's 1st Kentucky cavalry under Sgt. George C. Thrasher, waited well ahead of the main Union force. Around six o'clock, before dawn, the Confederate cavalry reached the creek, and although the Union pickets could not see them from the high ground north of the water, they heard them. Sgt. Eastham Tarrent later recalled that a challenge was shouted and ignored, while another account said the call of "Halt! Who goes there?" was answered by a Confederate pistol shot. The Federal vedettes then opened fire, beginning the Battle of Mill Springs. Under heavy fire, Bledsoe and Sanders pushed their companies forward as Thrasher's men withdrew to their horses and rode up the Mill Springs Road, stopping about one quarter mile north. Thrasher reported that Confederate infantry was advancing in force up the road and placed his men in a defensive position around a small log cabin on a low rise west of the road. Bledsoe and Sanders did not pursue, but instead sent word to Zollicoffer that they had found the enemy.