On May 5, 1862, a reporter visiting Harrison's Cave with Union troops wrote of coming to a hole in the ground like a large well, lighting candles, and beginning the descent. The soldier's entrance to Melrose Caverns, known as Harrison's Cave during the Civil War, lies directly up the hill. Hundreds of Union and Confederate soldiers explored the caverns and left names, figures, and symbols on the stone walls and columns, written in charcoal or carved with a knife or bayonet. The inscriptions include names from Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. Others used the caverns for target practice, leaving scars such as a bullet-marked stalagmite in the center of one of the large chambers. The greatest number of visitors came from Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks's command, camped nearby in late April through early May 1862. Among them were men of the 4th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, who explored the caves on May 5, 1862, accompanied by a reporter from the Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph, who described a large apartment of solid rock hung with stalactites and long colonnades, grottoes, niches, halls, galleries, and innumerable passages.