At Camp Wildcat, the area around this hill and along the trail served as the headquarters camp of Colonel Theophilus T. Garrard, a senior Union commander from nearby Manchester, a veteran of the Mexican War, and a member of a prominent Kentucky family whose three cousins also served as senior commanders in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. In 1861 he recruited the 7th Kentucky Infantry (US) and led them to Camp Wildcat. This hill and the road intersection below were the Confederate objective during the battle, and Federal units camped here in tents and dug earthworks to protect this key position, with many of the fortifications still visible. The battle was fought because of the Wilderness Road, which ran from Cumberland Gap northward over Wildcat Mountain and the hills along the Rockcastle River, then turned northwest, crossed the Rockcastle River, and ended 60 miles away at Harrodsburg. A key route of settlement in the late 18th Century, the road was important enough that in 1795 Kentucky’s first Governor, Isaac Shelby, established a tolling system for its maintenance, making it one of the first toll highways in the United States, though revenues fell short and by 1860 it was in poor repair. During the Civil War, the Wilderness Road twice carried Confederate armies into Kentucky, first Zollicoffer’s army in the fall of 1861 and then Major General Edmund Kirby Smith’s Army of Kentucky in the summer of 1862. The Federal defense here was anchored by two Union cannons from Captain William Standart’s Battery B, 1st Ohio Light Artillery of Cleveland, whose cannon pits were probably dug after the battle. Supported by Colonel James B. Steedman’s 14th Ohio, recruited in Toledo two months earlier, Standart’s men arrived while the battle was in progress, pushed aside Federal tents blocking their way, and took position along the ridge. Standart’s artillery silenced the Confederate cannon after two shots and shelled the Confederate infantry for the rest of the day, helping secure the Federal victory at Camp Wildcat while the 33rd Indiana held its position on Hoosier Knob.