The Ringgold Depot, a sandstone station on the Civil War-era Western and Atlantic Railroad built around 1849, first received a train on May 9, 1850. During the Civil War it witnessed major events, including the April 12, 1862 Great Locomotive Chase, when Confederates on the locomotive Texas captured Federal agents on the locomotive General two miles north. In 1862 and 1863, numerous buildings in Ringgold served as Confederate hospitals for thousands of sick and wounded soldiers. On November 27, 1863, after the Confederate defeat at Missionary Ridge, the depot became an important landmark in the Battle of Ringgold Gap, as Major General Patrick R. Cleburne's division defended Ringgold Gap and White Oak Mountain long enough to protect the wagon trains of the retreating Confederate Army of Tennessee moving south toward Dalton. Federal troops under Major General Joseph Hooker pursued into Ringgold, and many massed behind the depot and the nearby railroad embankment before attacking Confederate positions. During the five-hour battle, Hooker used the depot as a headquarters, and later in the fighting Union Major Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman joined him there. After the battle, Grant's staff took a new two-story brick house north of the depot, the wartime home of merchant William L. Whitman on Tennessee Street, for the top Union commander's use. When Hooker's men evacuated Ringgold on December 1, 1863, they destroyed much of the town, and explosions also damaged the depot. In the spring and summer of 1864, the Western and Atlantic Railroad became the main supply line for Sherman's armies in the Atlanta Campaign, with dozens of trains carrying Federal troops and supplies passing the depot almost daily, and repairs made to its walls in the late 1860s remain visible.