During the Civil War, thousands of soldiers with their wagons, livestock, and equipment traveled on the Louisville and Nashville Turnpike, present-day U.S. Highway 31 W, a major north-south route used early in 1862 by Union Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio as it marched from Kentucky to Nashville, while Confederate cavalry under Gen. John Hunt Morgan ambushed the leading division at Tyree Springs and continuously harassed Union forces along their line of march. The Stage Coach Inn, or the White House, for which the town is named, stood north of here, and Tyree Springs to the south occupied the halfway point between the Kentucky state line and Nashville. Late in the 1850s, Tyree Springs was briefly home to the Western Military Institute under Commandant Bushrod R. Johnson, later a Confederate general, and it was also a famous summer resort. Its plentiful water led both sides to station troops there at different times. In 1861, noted partisan ranger Ellis Harper first mustered into Confederate service with the 30th Tennessee Infantry at the Tyree Springs Hotel. On December 23, 1862, the hotel burned to the ground; although locals and Southern newspapers attributed the fire to Union soldiers, its cause was never determined.