In June 1864, to deny Gen. Robert E. Lee use of the South Side R.R. and the Richmond and Danville R.R., Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent Gen. James H. Wilson and Gen. August V Kautz south of Petersburg on a cavalry raid to destroy track and rolling stock. The Wilson-Kautz raiders reached Ford's Depot at sundown on June 22 and destroyed two trains and military supplies. A passenger train from the west stopped just short of the station, reversed course, and backed all the way to Burkeville, about 35 miles away, where news of the raid was telegraphed to Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond. Late that evening, Gen. W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee's cavalry fought a brief skirmish with the raiders. One Confederate account recalled that the train was warned the enemy were at Ford's, backed away, and then withdrew to Burkeville after a scouting party failed to return, while a Union cavalryman remembered the railroad west of Sutherland's lit by fires as ties, rails, culverts, and bridges were destroyed and the captured passenger and freight engines, set ablaze, shrieked through the night.