At daybreak on May 1, 1863, Union soldiers camped here found themselves amid a rugged landscape of ridges and ravines at the center of the battlefield. From this knoll, Generals Grant and McClernand directed the battle during the morning hours, and Grant spent most of the early fighting on this rise, from which he could see separate battles on the Rodney Road ridge and the Bruinsburg Road ridge. The landscape likely appeared much as it had during the war, with the forest cleared and the ridges visible. A plantation road here allowed communication between the two wings of the battle. Fighting north of here along Bruinsburg Road eventually pushed the Confederates toward Grand Gulf, and as they retreated north from Port Gibson, Confederates burned the bridge over little Bayou Pierre, though the fire did not destroy the iron and brick portions of the historic suspension bridge, which was repaired and used into the twentieth century.
