Part of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac occupied North Bend on June 14, 1864, en route to Weyanoke Point after Union forces had disengaged from the Cold Harbor battlefield so stealthily two days earlier that it escaped Gen. Robert E. Lee's notice. Grant had decided to cross the James River and then assault the weak Confederate defenses protecting Petersburg. Part of the army boarded ferry-boats three miles upstream at Wilcox's Landing, while the rest crossed the river half a mile west of North Bend on the Weyanoke pontoon bridge, an engineering masterpiece that used 101 pontoons to span 700 yards of water, incorporated schooners anchored in mid-stream to counteract the swift current, and featured a swing span to allow the passage of Federal vessels. Union soldiers entrenched across the narrow peninsula to protect the bridge, and United States Colored Troops occupied the earthworks on the morning of June 16 as the Federal rear guard and were the last Union troops to cross to the south bank of the James. On June 18, with the army safely across, engineers dismantled the pontoon bridge. Union cavalry commander Gen. Philip H. Sheridan and his forces occupied North Bend for three days beginning June 25 while they awaited transports to ferry them across the river to Wind-mill Point after Sheridan's two-week expedition to destroy railroad track. When the last of the troopers crossed over on June 28, cavalry activity north of the river ended.
