Dirt-and-Log Forts

A Civil War fort about the size of four football fields side by side stood atop this knoll, with outer walls of packed earth faced with logs rising ten feet high. Like the other batteries, forts, and rifle pits in the Gap, this outpost was continuously garrisoned by Confederates or Federals from 1861 until 1865. Troops posted here guarded the Harlan Road, the best way up Pinnacle Mountain. Confederates called this outpost Fort Green, and Union soldiers later renamed it Fort Edgar after a Union captain killed in combat here at Cumberland Gap in August 1862. In November 1861, a Confederate soldier wrote that Cumberland Gap was the roughest place in the world but that they were going to stick the mountain full of cannon to prevent the Lincolnites from crossing. On June 19, 1862, Benjamin F. Stevenson, surgeon of the 22nd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment, wrote of the waste of war: hundreds of tents left standing by the rebels had been slit to ribbons, flour, meal, rice, and beans were strewn over the fortifications and hillsides, and tons of shot and shell had been thrown over the cliffs into the ravines below.

Kentucky · United States