The trenches here formed part of the outer line of defenses protecting Fort Donelson against land attack. This section was first occupied by Capt. Rice E. Graves' six-gun Kentucky Battery, ordered to keep Union troops out of Indian Creek Valley. On February 13, 1862, when Union General McClernand tried to capture Capt. Frank Maney's four-gun Tennessee Battery on the ridge southeast of here, Graves' Battery helped thwart the Federal attack. During this battle, the first major fighting between the two armies, exploding shells set dry leaves and brush below Maney's position on fire, and the flames killed a number of Union wounded, though a few Confederates rescued some of them. The outer entrenchments, hastily built after the surrender of Fort Henry, ran in a broken semicircle from Hickman Creek on the west to near the Cumberland River beyond Dover on the east.