The Powder Magazine

At the site of the powder magazine stood an underground structure 40 feet long, 12 feet high, and 12 feet wide, covered with 15 feet of earth for protection and holding some 20 tons of gunpowder and ammunition during the battle. At midnight, the defenders silently evacuated the fort, piling equipment they could not take against the magazine and laying the Union dead nearby. An hour later, a party of volunteers lit a fuse to the magazine and galloped to safety. Colonel Thomas C. Fletcher of the 47th Missouri Volunteer Infantry recalled that the heavens were suddenly lighted by a grand column of fire ascending hundreds of feet and the whole region reverberated as though a mighty thunderbolt had riven Pilot Knob. The startled Confederates did not realize the fort had been evacuated, and Major General Price presumed an accident had ignited the magazine and that the fort would surrender in the morning.

Pilot Knob, Missouri · United States