The road across the river was the original route into the village from the north and west, and early visitors crossed North River first by ford, then by ferry, and finally by bridge. After the Civil War, four more bridges were built on about the same site, with two destroyed by floods and two dismantled. In June 1862, near the end of his Valley Campaign, Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was pursued by Union forces under Gen. John Fremont on the Shenandoah’s west bank and General James Shields on the east. Jackson chose to make his stand here because the covered bridge was the only way the Union forces could unite. On June 8, Jackson left half his army under Richard Ewell to stop Fremont at Cross Keys while the other half camped on the bluffs across the river, and he and his officers were headquartered in the village when Shields’ advance guard arrived, scattered the pickets, set up guns, and entered the town. Jackson then survived his closest personal call of the war by narrowly escaping across the bridge as artillery fire crashed through its timbers. After he reached the far shore, an Ohio battery rolled a cannon to the end of the bridge and aimed it at the mounted figure on the opposite bank. Suspecting it might be a captured Confederate gun, Jackson shouted and gestured toward the crew, but the noise of North River drowned out his voice, and the Union soldiers did not understand him, creating the episode of Jackson giving orders to an enemy gun crew that became part of Stonewall legend. The 37th Virginia Infantry then massed on the far side of the river, charged through the covered bridge, and drove the advance guard out of Port Republic. The next day, during the Battle of Port Republic, Jackson ordered the bridge burned, leaving Fremont unable to aid Shields, and after a morning of heavy fighting Jackson won the battle that ended the Valley Campaign.