During the Civil War, Hopewell Gap, a narrow pass in the Bull Run Mountains, served as a strategic avenue for military movements. On August 28, 1862, during the Second Manassas Campaign, Confederate Gen. James Longstreet directed Gen. Cadmus Wilcox’s division through the gap to outflank Union Gen. James B. Ricketts’s division at Thoroughfare Gap, but Wilcox’s troops bivouacked that night at Antioch Church after learning that Ricketts had already withdrawn. A few weeks later, Confederate Gen. Richard S. Ewell, recovering near Ewell’s Chapel from a leg amputation, was carried on a litter through Hopewell Gap to elude capture by Federal cavalry. On June 18, 1863, Col. Alfred N.A. Duffié narrowly escaped through here with 31 of his original 280 Rhode Island cavalrymen after his defeat at Middleburg. Shortly afterward, when Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart learned of Federal pickets here, he began his controversial ride to Gettysburg through unoccupied Glasscock’s Gap farther south, then changed course again when he found a Union corps at Haymarket. Late in July 1863, Confederate Maj. John S. Mosby held 153 prisoners and 200 horses at Camp Spindle near here until they could be sent to Richmond; the steep terrain concealed the camp and its natural spring, and Mosby released two New York Herald reporters to build good public relations and tell the world what a “gentleman” he was. According to local tradition, two of Mosby’s men also fooled 200 Federals into fleeing from the gap during the war by echoing rebel yells and rolling large stones off the steep slopes to make it seem that a larger force was attacking.
