On Aug. 29, 1863, the Union XX Army Corps under Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook and the Army of the Cumberland's cavalry under Maj. Gen. David S. Stanley broke camp at Stevenson, AL and crossed the Tennessee River at Caperton's Ferry. This force of 20,000 troops was one of three columns dispatched by Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans to compel a Confederate retreat from Chattanooga, TN, the transportation hub of this region. McCook's men ascended Sand Mountain and marched east on Caperton's Ferry Road, past Chestnut Grove Baptist Church (est. Sept. 1861) to camp sites along Town Creek. On September 4th this column reached the plantation of Winston O. Winston at Valley Head. Four days later, McCook sent his men over Lookout Mountain at Winston's Gap into Broomtown Valley. From that point his column could intercept Gen. Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee as it withdrew from Chattanooga. The armies led by Rosecrans and Bragg eventually clashed on Chickamauga Creek, about thirty miles east of this site. The Union cause suffered its most significant defeat in the Western Theater of the Civil War in the Battle of Chickamauga, Sept. 19-20, 1863.