On April 20, 1863, Confederate Generals William E. “Grumble” Jones and John D. Imboden began a raid from Virginia through present-day West Virginia on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Taking separate routes, they later reported that they marched 1,100 miles, fought several engagements, captured 700 Federals, seized about 1,200 horses and 4,000 cattle, and burned 4 turnpike bridges, more than 20 railroad bridges, 2 trains, and 150,000 barrels of oil. Most bridges were soon repaired, Confederate losses were slight, and by May 26 both commands had returned to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. On May 9, 1863, Jones led his cavalrymen to Burning Springs, also called Oiltown, before continuing southeast. His men set the oil fields afire, and the burning oil turned the Little Kanawha River into a sheet of flames for eight miles, with the light visible in Parkersburg, forty-two miles away. One witness remarked that Jones’s Confederates “ate all the food, drank all the whiskey and burned all the oil.” Jones reported that “all the oil, the tanks, barrels, engines for pumping, engine-houses, and wagons—in a word, everything used for raising, holding or sending it off was burned. …Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels.” The raid caused delegates to West Virginia’s first nominating convention in Parkersburg to flee briefly for fear he would attack the city. Burning Springs was also the site of other wartime fighting. As the nation’s first oil field boomtown, producing oil primarily for the lubrication of machinery, it had obvious military importance. After Union General George B. McClellan occupied Parkersburg in May 1861, he sent troops there to drive off Confederate guerrillas, and the engagement on June 19 was the first of several fights there. In May 1862, Confederate guerrillas attacked nearby Fort Hill. Colonel John C. Rathbone of the 11th West Virginia Infantry, U.S., whose family owned the oil field, had posted a detachment to protect it, but it was driven off and the fort was burned.