In 1864 Confederate troops used Kennesaw Mountain as a fortress. Across the rolling Georgia Piedmont, its height made clear why both armies in a war fought before modern communications sought high ground where they could see the enemy and thwart enemy tactics. Corporal Zachariah J. Armistead of the 42nd Georgia Infantry, serving as a signal station guard, called it “a beautiful place to see everything,” where both lines of battle were visible from one end to the other and where he felt out of danger. The steep inclines, deep ravines, giant boulders, and exposed cliffs of Kennesaw Mountain made it a difficult battlefield, especially in the heat of summer. Its rough terrain is a monadnock, or “lonely mountain” in the Algonquin language, and its peaks are the eroded remains of a massive mountain chain older than the Appalachians and once taller than the Rockies.