In late July during the Black Hawk War of 1832, Sac Indian leader Black Hawk led his starving followers through this area while escaping General Henry Atkinson and his military forces. After Black Hawk's delaying tactics at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights, he fled with his band toward the Mississippi River. On August 1, about 1,300 United States army and militia pursuing him, including future leaders Col. Zachary Taylor, Col. Henry Dodge, and Albert Sidney Johnson, encamped in this vicinity, then known as Pine Grove Village. Weary from their trek through the rugged terrain of western Wisconsin, the soldiers rested while their exhausted and hungry horses foraged in the grass here after being unable to find food for days in the jagged terrain. Because this military encampment became widely known throughout the territory, Pine Grove Village was renamed Soldiers Grove.