During the first week of March 1862, the 16,000-strong Confederate Army of the West spent days trudging on muddy roads through northwest Arkansas, traveling about 60 miles from winter camps deep in the Boston Mountains to reach Pea Ridge. General Earl Van Dorn drove his troops hard in an effort to sweep completely around his opponent by using a back road called the Bentonville Detour. He gambled that capturing the Telegraph Road, the only pipeline for Union supplies and communications, would let him crush the Union army, and the mountain hid the Confederates' approach to that vital highway. The final night of the march was the hardest, with bitter cold, hungry men whose supply wagons lagged far behind, falling snow, and exhausted soldiers slogging the last eight miles in darkness.