Within this park stands a remnant of Johnston's River Line, a unique Confederate fortification planned in mid June 1864 as General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee withdrew toward Atlanta before Major General William T. Sherman's advance. After earlier fighting near Ringgold and at Resaca, Rome, Adairsville, New Hope Church, Pickett's Mill, and Dallas, Brigadier General Francis Shoup proposed a defensive line along the Chattahoochee River near a key rail and road crossing. Johnston approved the plan, and Confederate engineers conscripted enslaved laborers from Atlanta-area slaveholders to build it. Shoup's design resembled the cutting edge of a saw blade, with arrowhead-shaped forts for about 80 riflemen at each point, trenches receding toward the river, and redans with two cannons where the trenches met. The original line was about six miles long and included 35 arrowhead-shaped forts, but Johnston ordered an extension beyond Mayson-Turner's Ferry that added about seven miles, only one more arrowhead fort, an anchor fort, and otherwise conventional trenching. Confederate troops entered the line on 5 July after leaving the Kennesaw Mountain Line and the Smyrna Line, and although many initially doubted the unusual works, Major General Patrick Cleburne endorsed them and the dismantling stopped. Sherman, viewing the line from above Vining's Station on the morning of 5 July, called it the strongest field fortification he had ever seen and chose not to assault it directly. Instead, Federal forces feigned a crossing downstream while other troops moved upstream to find places to cross the Chattahoochee, establishing bridgeheads near Sope Creek on 8 July and at Roswell and Power's Ferry on 9 July. Flanked again, Johnston withdrew from the River Line on the night of 9-10 July, and President Davis removed him from command a week later.