Thirteen unknown Confederate soldiers are traditionally believed to lie in graves along this stretch of the Old Trace, where Confederate troops marched and camped during the Civil War. Their identities and exact circumstances are unknown; they may have been wounded from Shiloh who retreated here in 1862, men serving under General Nathan Forest who passed this way in 1864, or soldiers connected with the Tupelo headquarters of J.B. Hood’s Army of Tennessee near the war’s end. They may have died of wounds or from the hunger, poverty, and sickness that lingered in army camps. Their simple grave markers face backward toward the Trace so travelers could read and remember. The original markers may once have carried names, but those disappeared long ago. In 1940 Senator Theodore Bilbo arranged for marble headstones, but they were stolen, and the National Park Service later erected the headstones now in place.