The Rock House

The Rock House. Fighting on the Wilderness Trail Road. This building, constructed late in the 1830s, was a rest stop and tollhouse for travelers and wagoners on the Wilderness Trail Road. During the Civil War, such roads through the rugged Cumberland Plateau were the focus of clashes between Union forces and Confederate partisans., In July 1864, the Confederate partisan leader Champ Ferguson and his men took more than 500 horses and mules from a Federal camp and drove them past here to England Cove, about 15 miles northeast. Union Maj. Thomas H. Reeves, 4th Tennessee Infantry, led the pursuit with a mixed force of infantry and cavalry. At England Cove, Reeves's men “fired some fifty rounds at them, ... and all the men fled to the mountains ... [after] the stock had been divided among the captors” and concealed. The Federals demanded that local residents reveal the hiding places, but they refused. In retaliation, as Reeves reported, “For a distance of fifteen miles down the valley every house where good stock, arms, or goods of a contraband nature could be found, the most unparalleled plunder was committed.", In Sparta, Union troops imposed martial law, arrested every white man, and made the women fear that the town would "be burnt up and all the citizens killed.” After retaking some Federal stock and confiscating more from "citizens who were out guerilla-ing,” Reeves withdrew down this road to Kingston. Guerilla fighting continued to the war's end despite other Union counterattacks near the Rock House that included burning a hotel.