Few Civil War sites evoke stronger mental images than the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County, where dense forest and darkness made combat a nightmare and where clearings such as this one along the Orange Turnpike became natural battlefields by default. Hooker had wanted to avoid fighting there, but Lee forced a confrontation in the Wilderness. Finding the terrain nearly impenetrable, Hooker’s army advanced eastward on three roads that met on open, high ground one mile behind this point, yet the dense forest left the three parts of his army virtually isolated from one another. While the Federals tried to avoid the Wilderness, the Confederates used it to their advantage, and on May 1 Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson’s command, concealed in the thickets, surprised Union forces and changed the course of the Chancellorsville campaign.