From mid-January to mid-March 1865, Maj. Gen. James Harrison Wilson of the U.S. Army assembled at this site the largest cavalry force ever massed in the western hemisphere. Five divisions totaling 22,000 camped from Gravelly Springs westward to Waterloo, while Wilson established headquarters a mile east of the springs at Wildwood plantation, the boyhood home of Alabama senator and governor George Houston. After intensive training, Wilson's Cavalry crossed the Tennessee to invade South Alabama and Georgia in a campaign that included burning the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and the capture of Pres. Jefferson Davis at Irwinville, Georgia, in May 1865 after Lee's surrender.
