During the Civil War, the Jackson River Depot stood here as the western terminus of the Virginia Central Railroad, which extended 200 miles from Hanover Junction north of Richmond. Just east of the Kanawha Pass in the Allegheny Mountains, the depot, the railroad, and the Jackson River were strategically important logistical links to Tennessee and served as “back door” gateways to the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia. On May 20, 1862, the 3rd Provisional Brigade, composed of Ohio infantry and West Virginia cavalry under Union Col. George Crook, raided the depot to capture supplies stored here, but Confederate forces had evacuated the day before he arrived. Crook did obtain vital information about Confederate dispositions from the depot’s telegraph office, the telegraph operator, and his dispatches, then immediately burned a nearby bridge over the Jackson River and hastily returned to Lewisburg, in present-day West Virginia, where a few days later he defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Lewisburg. The Oakland Grove Presbyterian Church, the only surviving structure of the Jackson River Depot railroad complex, served as a Confederate hospital and cemetery, and twelve unknown Tennessee Confederate soldiers are buried behind the church.