During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces considered Wolf Run Shoals an essential crossing point on the Occoquan River. Confederate regiments camped on the south side of the shoals and posted pickets there from the winter of 1861–1862 until March 1862. In December 1862, the Federal XI and XII Corps used the ford on their march from Northern Virginia south to Fredericksburg. In January 1863, the 2nd Vermont Brigade’s 12th and 13th Infantry camped on the north side of the ford, and because of increased Confederate partisan ranger activities under Captain John S. Mosby, the units were strengthened in March. The Union Army of the Potomac’s II and VI Corps, as well as the Artillery Reserve, crossed the shoals as they moved north in June 1863 toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg. General Joseph Hooker then ordered the 2nd Vermont Brigade to follow, leaving the ford unguarded and enabling Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his cavalrymen to cross there just 48 hours later, early on the morning of June 27, on what would become his controversial ride to Gettysburg. Colonel John S. Mosby’s Rangers made the last reported military use of this ford in April 1865. Local resident Mary Willcoxon nursed young Vermont Lieutenant Carmi Marsh back to health at her nearby house, and the grateful Marsh later provided her with financial support, including her funeral expenses. Wolf Run Shoals, a three-island ford spanning the Occoquan River, also has roots dating to the Revolutionary War: in 1781, General George Washington ordered a road built for American and French wagons, cavalry, and cattle en route to Yorktown, and part of that road, now called the Washington-Rochembeau Wagon Route, lies here leading to the water’s edge, though the shoal islands and the mill that once stood there are now submerged in the Occoquan Reservoir.
